What's Going On? with Shaun
What's Going On? with Shaun is a variety podcast with a marketing lean, but a healthy appetite for conversations about things that make life worth living. Most episodes are about 60 minutes in length and hosted by automotive internet guy and dealer superhero, Shaun Raines. Guests include business executives, entrepreneurs, musicians, enthusiasts, artists, authors and a variety of interesting people.
What's Going On? with Shaun
What's Going On?...with Shaun: Jason Ezell
What if the key to revolutionizing your business lies within stories of the past? Join us as industry veteran Jason Ezell shares his incredible journey from being on the dealership floors to pioneering digital transformations in the automotive industry. With over 30 years of experience and as the co-founder of groundbreaking companies like DealerSkins and Datium, Jason offers a treasure trove of insights into the industry's digital shift. From the skepticism of dealerships in the late 1990s to the rise of digital marketplaces, this episode promises a rich understanding of the automotive world's evolution.
Step back in time to the early days of AutoTrader and the transformative shift it brought to the automotive sales landscape. Hear firsthand accounts of what it was like to be part of this digital "gold rush," where traditional newspaper listings gave way to a powerful online marketplace. Through tales of camaraderie, competition, and a culture reminiscent of the Wild West, we explore the vibrant dynamics of sales teams driving this transformation and the lessons learned along the way. Uncover the strategies that propelled startups to scalability and the grit required to navigate economic uncertainties.
In a world where data can be both a tool and a weapon, discover the pivotal role of data standardization and its impact on dealerships. Jason reflects on the challenges of integrating new technologies while staying true to the fundamentals of the car business. As the episode unfolds, we also emphasize the growing importance of quality visuals and video marketing in meeting modern customer expectations. Whether you're an industry veteran or a curious newcomer, this episode offers a compelling mix of nostalgia, innovation, and practical wisdom, all captured through personal stories and industry insights.
Hello and welcome to another episode of what's Going On with Sean, a variety podcast grounded in marketing but with an appetite for quality conversations about things that make life worth living. Time is precious, so thanks for tuning in today as we find out what's going on with Jason Ezell. Ladies and gentlemen, you're in for a treat 30-year veteran friend of mine, 30-year veteran from the automotive industry joining what's Going On with Sean today and I just I can't be more happy about it. It's always great and you guys are probably very familiar that all of these episodes end up being with people typically that I know. Every once in a while there's some that I don't know that well, but I know Jason really well. We've known each other for a very long time because we come from those pioneer wagons of the automotive digital age where we were actually part of all of the pioneers before this whole internet thing came upon us. Yes, his journey is extraordinary from dealership floors to shaping digital transformation. Co-founders of a couple of companies that co-founder of a couple of companies that many of you that have been around the space at least for a handful of years will remember. That's right. Sales strategies in the Southeast, founding industry, revolutionary companies like DealerSkins you guys remember DealerSkins and, of course, you remember Datium.
Speaker 1:Jason's been at the forefront of innovation for a long time. It's not new to him. He is very equipped for it and he has been helping shape the way that dealerships connect with customers longer than a whole lot of people that are probably listening to this episode. So I'm really glad that you're taking time to watch and or listen. You will definitely pick up on Jason's passion for the industry and also his deep, deep and broad experience. He's always had a relentless drive to innovate. Like I said, it's not new to him and he definitely always has vision for the future.
Speaker 1:I was really excited to catch up with him ahead of this episode and he's going to share insights from his journey. I think that many of you will actually be able to tap into some of those and you will relate to them, and I think you'll also really appreciate the perspective that he gives as he continues building a legacy for future generations in the business. He's definitely one of my favorite people and you've probably if any of you know me that well, you've heard me use this expression before where it's not just the car business although very much the car business is a whole lot of coal and very few diamonds, making the diamonds very easy to spot. It won't take a full episode before you realize that Jason Izzell is very much one of those diamonds. Welcome to what's Going On with Sean Mr Izzell.
Speaker 2:I'm humbled honored. I am excited, nervous. It's the first time I've been nervous in a long time, so I don't know what it is. I was like it's sean, like I gotta, I gotta do you know I can't mess this one up, um, but man that was uh I would ask you to do my eulogy as well when I pass away. If you'll, if you'll do that.
Speaker 1:That was fantastic you want to meet that guy. I always tell that people like most people get like oh man, I wish you wouldn't do such a long intro. You know I like to do long intros. Maybe the audience doesn't like it, maybe they want the quick intros, but I've known you a long time and you deserve all of that description and much more. And you don't need to be. It's just me. No one has to be nervous with me. It's just a couple of old dudes talking about their lives and the car business and all kinds of other things.
Speaker 2:So it is and it does. It still feels like that, you know. So that's uh. We had a good time the other night just chit-chatting about uh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, when we first knew each other, our kids had been born, and now they're gradual you know that's how long it's been, so you've had a lot to talk about over the years for sure. But yeah, I really appreciate this. I love the podcast I little bit on going back in the career and I don't know if I actually would remember the answer to any of these questions, even though we've known each other a long time. But what first drew you to the automotive industry? And I'm curious about that early experience at the Toyota store.
Speaker 2:So that's a good question. Because I hate to say it was money, sean, but it was relative at the time because I just graduated college, university of Tennessee. Go Vols almost made it Get home back to Nashville doing the interview thing and my degree was in retail management. So I applied for a job at a local department store in the men's shoe department. For a job at a local department store in the men's shoe department Because in college I had worked at a shoe store among. You know, in college you got to do what you got to do in college, right. So selling women's shoes was one of the highlights of my early career. But, you know, learned a lot about shoes and feet Don't need to go there and feet Don't need to go there. I applied to this gig for, you know, manager of the men's shoe department. They said we want to offer you, you know, $37,500 and you'll get.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I stood up in the middle of him saying that or if I waited until he finished, but it was a short conversation. I was like I've got six years of college, man, I was on the extended learning program. I was like, hey, I didn't go to college for six years for 37 smacks. You know I can go mow yards. So I was a little frustrated. And before that, to get my blood flowing, get me in the pit, I had went to the Toyota store and browsed a lot, thinking, graduated college, going to be a manager at a department store, let me go ahead and start looking at cars right before I even had the interview. So I was crushed because I kind of picked out a car. So I thought, you know what? I'm going back to that dealership and ask if they need any salespeople. And ask if they needed salespeople. So that day I went straight back, walked in, didn't have an interview, didn't have a resume, walked in and said I want to sell cars. I guess it goes back.
Speaker 2:The first word out of my mouth as a baby was car. I was a car nut from day one. So I said I'm not a big, I don't have a lot of passion for shoes, but I got passion for cars. I could name every make, model and horsepower when I was three, four, five years old. So I said why not do what you love? It's a novel idea.
Speaker 2:And they hired me on the spot and I said look, what makes you think you can sell cars? Right, this was early. This was 92 or 93. The date was early. I said I'll tell you, I'll be your top salesperson in six months. I said if not, then I don't need to be here. I was top salesperson in three months. In eight months I was floor manager At the car business. When you start making too much commission, they promote you to manager so they can make you work 80 hours a week and not pay commission. So you know how that goes. So, yeah, I was the youngest sales manager in the Cincinnati region, which was eight states, for Toyota and not that. That's a great thing, but I just had a passion. I just loved it. I loved that business and I'll tell you why, sean I was.
Speaker 2:I went into it thinking I'm gonna do everything the opposite of what people hate about buying cars. I'm not, I'm gonna be. I'm not gonna be that guy, right, I'm gonna do everything opposite. So I went through the training. You know all the schedule. You know how to get them in the booth, move your chair chair around. You know to block them so they can't leave when you do. You know I was like I just took a real approach to it. Just be a real person, you know, be funny, be educational. My job was to educate them on those vehicles, and if they loved it, they would buy it, and it's what people wanted. It's what we all want, right? So it was success, in spite of how they think you should sell cars, it's just how would you want to be sold? How would you? How would you want it done? It's so simple.
Speaker 2:It seems like it so that's what started that is, I wasn't about to make 37 and and wanted to be able to. If nothing else, I got to drive around cool cars all day.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So did they make you sell them a pin as part of your interview process. The pin Did they make you? The only time that I had this happen to me was at a car dealership job that I didn't get hired for actually, where I I went in like a lot of people talk about that ad that they see, make a hundred thousand dollars a year, have a car to drive, and I don't remember where I was working at the time. But I was very young and I was like that sounds amazing and it was just all about that can't be real. But I just thought I'm going to go through the process of like figuring out like what's the catch, and you know, no appointment or they just because they just said just come on in. Yeah, and you know you're gonna go talk to this person. And I remember that person I was sitting across the desk from and there's a pen sitting on the desk and he just said sell me that pen pen. And I was like classic rain reindeer games and I don't know I was. I don't remember what I said. I was young and stupid, and now I'm old and stupid, but I so all I remember is the story and I didn't get hired then and then I didn't sell cars until after I'd been on the service provider side. You know that story.
Speaker 1:I was actually still I was at during I at the time I was at rentals but early internet days. I just got tired of dealers saying have you ever sold a car in your life? And I hadn't. And so then I did. I found a Chevy dealership that I sold nights and weekends out for a couple of years. But you also in those early years you kind of pioneered not kind of you pioneered this kind of a sales program in the Southeast. And was that also at this Toyota store?
Speaker 2:I'd love to know a little bit about that, no, so, uh, it right around 98 is when the internet came on, 98, uh, and. And the dealership I was at I believed they were the ones that you know that we're not worried about this internet thing, right, you're, we're not even gonna build're not going to have a website, because you got to come here to buy a car. You can't buy a car, but someone you can't see. You know all that stuff, right? So I finally got hired on at thoroughbred and it was porsche, ferrari, audi, jaguar, sob, it was where every salesperson in town wanted to work, back in the day before Nashville blew up, and we have all that stuff now, but back in the day, thoroughbred was the only place to get a Porsche Jag. What have you? They only had four salespeople ever, so one died, which I'm sorry for.
Speaker 2:However, there was an empty desk, so I put my best suit on, went and applied and I did get hired on at Thoroughbred and I said look, this internet thing is really happening. Mike, we need to. What have you done about that? We've thought about it, this, that and the other. I said let me handle that. I said I want to be that guy Because at that time in Nashville used car market. For high-end used cars there weren't a whole lot. It wasn't like today, where Nashville's the sixth most visited city and the third for bachelorette parties. We're real proud of that.
Speaker 1:But it, just I couldn't see those cars working.
Speaker 2:Downtown has gotten out of control. But I was using Trader Online, which was the magazine that they had just put on the website. Basically, just learn how. So Trader Online and AutoConnect were the only two automotive websites out there. I mean amateur at best, I guess. Right, they were really for dealers or for you know, they just hadn't come any. There was a 1.0 version, right, but I was using those websites to find cars out of town to bring into Nashville to sell.
Speaker 2:Mainly, alan Jackson, the country music singer, great guy, wanted a Canary Yellow Porsche 911. Well, you know as well as I do that's not an easy find. Used, autotrader online found one in Florida, called the dealer, worked out a deal, got the car back to Nashville and sold it to Alan Jackson. And my boss said what, how did you do that? And I said, well, I, right here, I'm the geek right. All of a sudden, like everyone else, oh, you're the, you're the internet geek, right. So, sean, he wanted the best website in town, hired an agency, $30,000.
Speaker 2:Later we have a beautiful website, two-minute intro showing this. You know, like no one's going to ever get to the cars, I was like, oh my God. So hence the website. You know part of it. But that website, when it took off and people could log on and actually look at Porsches and Jaguars and Ferraris on their screen. Now, obviously a lot of our leads were unqualified buyers, but we finally had a place online that you could go look and at least make an appointment to buy a car. So that took off rather rapidly and I'm glad we were the ones to do that because we had the nicest cars in town. It should have been. We should have set the bar, so that was the fun part.
Speaker 1:I remember that era it was really. It did feel like this is because it was. These things have never been done before, the capabilities never existed prior to this and, being in the beginning, we didn't even know each other. Right? You're like I'm in Seattle Washington, right In downtown, working on this Microsoft Carpoint team that's housed in a Reynolds and Reynolds office the early days of lead providers, early days of websites. You're in retail in Nashville doing your thing. And then, of course, there's all of these intersections of people like us, sometimes many years later.
Speaker 1:But when I reflect on all this now and I hear you share that story, man, it just brings all of it back so quickly. And then I remember there's still so much tied to that of something that didn't exist prior and then all of a sudden does exist, that there are challenges that still exist. From that, what isn't new technology anymore, new capabilities anymore. There are still challenges tied to it, most of them process related, all of these decades later. It's so interesting and I will get to it.
Speaker 1:I've got some things I definitely can't wait to talk some dealer skins and dating and stuff. But you, like you mentioned you go out and back. Then dealers could spend a whole lot more money on the splash page, like the you know, and so I won't get too much into. Let's talk about bz results. We'll talk about that later in terms of flash websites and all this other stuff or a combination of all these things. But for all you kids out there, meaning you've only been in this thing for 10 years, I'm like, okay, you know, hold our beer, okay um but.
Speaker 2:I but on the other flip side of that hold my razor.
Speaker 1:I got this. Yeah, hold bull, even hold my nok like hold my brick Gosh. I love this because there's so much, I think, that a blend of all the new ideas that new people always bring in. We were once part of that crop of people and I tell people all the time I feel like all my superpowers in automotive from my marketing, sales, biz, dev, all the things that I've had success with they didn't all come from me. I mean, I have to be wired. You have to be wired in a certain way that when you learn from people, you have people mentoring you. You find the place where all the greatest insights and places where you can level up your own education. You find those and then you find out if your own capabilities and talents can do something with it. That's very much my story.
Speaker 1:I think probably you'd say the same thing, and I think there is so much more of that. I think you're living for this too, and we'll maybe get some thoughts on this later in this conversation from you Is to see all of those things from the past that are still relevant and see how they can transform people that are in it today, that are newer and they have other ideas and they're taking technologies that didn't exist last year, let alone 10 years ago, and see where all these things go with ai. I just I'm fascinated by all of it, but I'm it also excites me. It makes me I've said this before like I used to feel like luke, but I I'm not luke anymore, I'm Yoda, I'm one of the Yodas and I want to make sure that I'm helping the younger Jedis really know how to wield those lightsabers. So let me take you to some call them maybe milestone type questions.
Speaker 1:I've never asked you about this, but you were part of these first sales team, maybe the first at Autotrader, like during its infancy, and a lot of people who are in the industry right now and they think AutoTrader and they're like, oh, cox, right, like Cox Automotive, and they're a conglomerate of all these really big brands, very successful big brands. But talk to me share about that perspective of AutoTradercom when they went from. These are literally just like old school newspaper books that you buy at 7-Eleven and flip through all the pages to find a car and you're literally calling somebody probably not on a cell phone to say, hey, do you still have it from a private seller? And then, of course, the digital rise of autotrader became something completely different transformative really. What was that like?
Speaker 2:It was much like probably the first astronauts where they come and say you saw that big metal thing outside. We're going to strap you in it and it's going to blast off about 4,000 miles an hour and it's going to be fun. Don't worry about it. It's going to be a little scary. It's the first time, but it was like you're hopping on this roller coaster that you're not sure where it's going, but you know it's going to be. It was the gold rush.
Speaker 2:We were the first one and yeah, I was in the first class of salespeople that they hired to go out and give away free listings. We didn't even have a product to sell. All our job was to do which was brilliant at the time is to get dealers to sign up and get that inventory on the website, Because the website is nothing until you have a bunch of inventory on it. So free listings was the first thing. That's all we sold. It was a pretty easy sell, right. So they were paying us great money to go out and give stuff away. But the strategy was get those 200 cars on the site, give me another 200 cars and then, when they reached a million cars, all of a sudden the people will come. But I'll tell you some funny things. That was two weeks in Atlanta that I won't ever forget.
Speaker 2:Well, I might've forgotten some of it, but they it was like they took these kids. This was the year 2000. So this was 99. This was early we were.
Speaker 2:I was much younger and they took these kids. None of us had software sales experience or wasn't software. You know we were. We had come from all over, but I had used trader online. And so Molly Reynolds who's now with Ford direct, she's still she hired me. She said you know, you have used the product as a dealer, so you know. So I was one of the only dealer people that they hired and I said, oh, this is a mistake which we found out soon into training. But in that first class, cassie Bramer was, in that first class, one of the smartest women you'll ever meet in this people you'll ever meet in this industry. Has had a stellar career.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ran Van Tile, ran, ran, vantile, ran. I mean she, you know, if you've ever met a success, it's her. Uh, yeah, she's a rock star. Yeah, tim O'Rourke uh, who's with data? One now was in that class. Brett Uber is it was in that class. He's got five dealerships in Mississippi. It was like, looking back, it was like man, I was playing basketball with Jordan and freaking Pippen and Rod, like it was those people most of that class has gone on and done some amazing things.
Speaker 1:Was Trey Troxell, george Barrage? Were those guys in that group? Yeah, trey Troxell.
Speaker 2:And I know I'm missing some, which I feel bad about. But most of those people stayed and I tell you there's still some who are there with Cox after all this time, but they made it. It was so fun and so hype. You were on the Kool-Aid man. You couldn't help but get on the Kool-Aid man. You couldn't help but get on the Kool-Aid because they said we're going to be the biggest and the best automotive marketplace on the web. And they did right and we got to be a part of that. But the cool thing was Sean. It's like we were talking about the other night. You know my training sessions were with Chip Perry, right? It?
Speaker 1:wasn't with.
Speaker 2:You know Tom Thumb, who you know just graduated. You know Arizona State and now wants to be a. I was trained by Chip Perry and Hal Green and you know Steve Greenwood. I mean it was like we learned from John Wayne and from the Lone Ranger. You know, it's like we got that firsthand knowledge, man, like we didn't know it at the time, but as time went on we realized we were in a unique spot. That was, the sounding gun went off and boy the party was on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's why I wanted to ask you about it, because it's like you're Rogue One, like you're like the first group at Autotrader and the point you just made you're kind of for lack of a better picture in my mind just kind of sitting at the feet of Chip Perry. Everybody at Carscom were under Mitch's leadership in the beginning. You know, were under Mitch's leadership in the beginning. Like those experiences and oftentimes the people that were selected to be part of those teams, like you just said, that most of them are still out there. Some of them are still within the Cox family, but they're out there, massively successful in what they've done as part of these pioneering teams.
Speaker 1:There are a lot of people who are living the life off of the backs of what happened with all the people that really were on the bleeding edge because they shed blood to pave the way, to literally lay the foundation of what everything's built on right now, and that doesn't make me mad. I love the fact that I get to say that. Well, I was in that mix and there were, there were a lot of people that it's so encouraging to hear that many of them, like most of them, didn't end up leaving the industry. They're all over it and yet in most of them, in positions that they're not out there. You know, trying to compete for attention, share, which is, that's unfortunate, a little bit of an epidemic problem in our industry of people who want the limelight but literally have nothing of value to share with the industry. But that's an aside. I don't want to stop any thoughts that you might have, also on this auto trader thing, but I want to ask you a little bit about dealer skins.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, the auto trader thing, I mean it was two. You put all these young people in Atlanta for two weeks at the W Hotel, unlimited budget. I mean you talk about launching a company. I mean we couldn't, we didn't want to leave, we were just. But I tell you, there's some fun. We had some fun there in those two weeks. The baseball playoffs were going on and we got tickets to Atlanta Braves who were actually in the playoffs, so we got to go. You know they took us on the bus. If you've ever been to the Braves Stadium, I highly recommend it. They've got the Budweiser patio up there that you get to sit. Sean, three hours, the game's over for three hours and there are still 30 of us up there and they kept. They come around and said, look, you know, we really got to clean things up.
Speaker 2:We got to ask you to leave and we're like, look, we're not causing, you know, we're just here watching again. They're like the game's been over, like the players have left, everyone's gone, like look at the stadium, Look around, look around. And we were still just hanging.
Speaker 2:You know, I mean, it was, um, and if you ever have a chance to have tim o'rourke on here, man, he's, that guy's a character, he's got a, he's a funny dude, but there are that goes back to the days where it's thank goodness those camera phones weren't good quality, or most of us or even you could do that yeah yeah, or you could just take pictures, and they were half blur, you know. But that was just prior to super smartphones, so there's not a lot of documentation, but boy did we have a good time.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, the, the light and the loafers weak ass. You know generations we have now in all industries. They literally would go home and they would cry, they would like they'd all be in therapy. Like, oh yeah, I, it was hazy, I mean you had to.
Speaker 2:They were prepping you for the next 20 years of my life.
Speaker 1:Did a little yes boot camp yeah, I won't name names on your episode but we all know them and if I did name them you'd be like oh, I know them all, because there were some people who I mean they were professional at going hard. I mean, I mean I I wish maybe some episode I will do that where I'll like say this person and I love them. But this person was the person that forever changed my interest in ever really going hard at nada or any company meetings like any off any off sites, because waivers that people can sign and say, yes, you can discuss.
Speaker 2:Maybe if we could at least legalize it there's some great stories, Sean, I mean if you haven't willed your boss home in a wheelchair that you stole from one hotel in Vegas, wheeled down the strip, stopped to have a nightcap along the way and a corndog with your buddy playing down the wheelchair. If you haven't done that, you haven't earned your right.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep. A short story, even though this episode will come out after NADA 2025, which is in New Orleans this year, but a New Orleans native story, I can tell you. I had just taken a job at a new company and it was celebrate time, and one of the nights we went out celebrating I met some of this company's clients who knew who I was and they were really excited. Like oh, we love it that you took this job. It's all awesome. And so it was a very celebratory party time and a couple of the guys from this dealer group like they're. They really wanted to like let's keep.
Speaker 1:Like we're just hammering down the jack and cokes and in between that, just some straight shots of bourbon whiskey and very, very quickly it was like man, I'm like I haven't eaten anything, and they're like we haven't either. Like let's go out to one of those lucky dog carts. And all I'll say is I, when people are like sharing stories sometimes, I just ask the youngsters the question have you ever gone so hard that you forgot that you hadn't eaten enough and then you decided to go workout of a lifetime? And if you haven't, then like let's just move on to the next topic, because I have and it was not fun, and it's burned into my memory of something that I will never forget.
Speaker 2:So funny. I don't remember that story, but when you started on this story, my deadfall was a shrimp. Poor boy from a street side vendor. Now, what was I thinking? How drunk was I, I'm sorry. How not thinking was I to get shrimp from a cart on the side of the road in new orleans at 2 am? That's what you do. And that shrimp, let me tell you, bad shrimp, bad night. Yeah, that was a bad night those lucky dogs.
Speaker 1:They are not your normal like size hot dog, you know, let's, let's keep it clean, kids. But I can handle a normal, even a regular bun length hot dog. Give, bring it on all day long, I'm, I'm here for it. Lucky dog, right, kind of like costco size monster dog. Yeah, she's a whole family. I wasn't thinking that night like I better, I better chew, really, really well, or if, because if this decides to and I didn't and I paid for it, and for days I was like man, I'm gonna be ripped, I'm gonna be ripped my abs.
Speaker 2:There's thousands of. I mean this is so funny. But another thing you said early on you know the Internet. Back then our worlds were rather secluded, right, you know there was a radius. You know, for our jobs, our friends, you know, unless you just traveled a lot anyway. But you think about the relationships and the communications. You know that started, you kind of led to it earlier. You were in Seattle, I'm in Nashville Two cool halfway smart dudes we can share ideas.
Speaker 2:Right, it opened up on and with AutoTrader we traveled. You had to travel, right, but I met people from all over the United States. You know I've never met anyone from South Dakota. Right Got to and it was a family Like. We took care of each other. We knew we were part of something big and something special and we had our own calls amongst ourselves. Without our boss on the call we would make our own marketing material. There wasn't fancy and we'd make our own. This was Otter Trader bro. We had swag out the wazoo but we didn't have any marketing material. But it brought together and it gave us an avenue to to meet other people and exchange ideas and and have really good time with cool people that have lasted 30 years Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, just when you think about that it brings up memories of a digital dealer didn't exist yet there was no. You know all the conferences that you know brian pash wasn't even in the auto industry, like jared hamilton had not started driving sales at that point. Like, did you know it was? What was it?
Speaker 1:Uh, aisp on the web um, arrow conference, I think was the first thing that before digital dealer. In fact, that a lot of the people was kind of carry over in that back to, I mean, some of the people that have been in it for for the long period of time, like sean v bradley, um, ralph paglia, there's a don crawford, all the guys that came over from half a car into that reynolds acquisition of their web, that website platform. There there were so many of those people that would like if you and I were talking about these things with them, they'd be like they'd have their own stories to tell. But there were all of these fragmented groups of people that were still building this foundation and it wasn't until people started saying there should be probably some conferences here. Nada didn't dedicate anything to digital for quite some time.
Speaker 2:Not for a while.
Speaker 1:And yeah, so very, very interesting. Well, so, from the auto trader era, something had to light a fire of inspiration around hey, we can build another website platform here and one that's better here and one that's better. So you and I not in a dog-eat-dog competitive nature, but we competed in the fact that I was at Reynolds and Reynolds part of their website team and their lead provision teams when you co-founded DealerSkins, and there were a lot of things that I really liked about DealerSkins, one of which, though, was just that you didn't feel Everything. Reynolds and Reynolds always felt a little bit to me like even going to corporate headquarters, even when they built the new one. Um, this is way back for me, but it just still felt.
Speaker 1:Like I'm a big library, you know it was very, you know they. They wanted a, their reputation to be classy, you know it was meant to be, and it felt like they wanted that culture even in their acquisitions, like the of of Audemars websites and the half a car stuff, and those those businesses were renegades right, they were, you know you're talking about like innovators, pioneers, and so, trying to cram a Reynolds and Reynolds culture into that stuff, there was always a lot of friction, oh yeah, and, but you didn't have to deal with any of that type of legacy thing. It was like, hey, brand new, fresh idea. Tell me about that. What was the inspiration for it? What got you going on dealer skins?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a cool story, but I can tell you it brings back a lot of different emotions and feelings, because I'll tell you exactly what the genesis was. Very quickly, with AutoTrader we were selling, I was trying to sell internet leads to dealers who didn't even have email addresses yet, much less they had no websites. They wanted us to fax them the leads. You remember the dealership, that fax machine was gold dude, like, oh, we got a lead, we got a fax lead. So and that's one thing that auto trader didn't even plan on in those early days was the. The leads got emailed to you. Well, now they don't have an email address, like we were before that. So they said, okay, well, can you fax it? So auto trader had to build an auto dialer that would would fax those leads when they wanted to email. So I was like in Nashville, like I say, we're slow, it just takes a little longer for good ideas to get here right.
Speaker 2:So I used to tease people my ISP back then was overyondercom, right, I mean, that's how backwards we were, and even the dealers were the same as these dealers. So it is like this internet thing it ain't going to do. You know, denial, denial, dial up was our big problem. Right, that was number one enemy which I don't know. Some of you younger guys, you used to have to dial through a phone cable to get to the big deterrent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there was no such thing as high speed, anything related to the internet in that era, not even Well and even dial-up was rather unpredictable.
Speaker 2:Right so, but make it short. I was selling internet leads to dealers who didn't have email addresses. So one of my clients, michael Wins, who's another icon in this industry, super smart veteran, he was an internet manager for a five rooftop group I got with a local programmer, had built these wonderful, simple, clean five websites that had a splash page. This was 2000. Like, this was first, and he had had what I consider I had one of the first websites in nashville, but it was just me. He had an internet department, mike did. He had two guys working for him. They were taking their own pictures. Like mike had this figured out early on and and had not come from the car, he got in the car business so that he could tell that dealer, I'm going to be your internet manager. They gave him the, the broom closet in the back right, just like most internet managers back of the day. Yeah, and when I sold him the auto trader advertising, I said, mike, these, these websites are really good. Like, I got dealers all day. Most of them didn't have a website. If they did, it was a cobalt site. That's all you could have had unless a local programmer built it. No, there was. There were good websites, but cookie cutter. So I told mike I was like this is we could sell these. Man, this is when I go on my travels to dealers, I'll hand them your card, as they want a website, and then you get your programmer to hack it out and we'll split the money. I mean it was going to be a side hustle selling websites. Wow, we thought maybe $500 a month, $300, but it was cheap. So we did that, referred a few and all of a sudden, every time I went to a dealership they were like, well, how do we get a website? Here you go, and greg was popping these websites out from his mom's basement, just you know. And he's like, hey, man, we should.
Speaker 2:So, as we went on, we all got together and after a few beers don't ever invite beers to a big decision conversation leave them out, because we all decided we would quit our jobs making great money, and we were going to start a website company and we were literally going to drive around knoxville, memphis, jackson, just stay in tennessee. Plenty of dealers rack up 20, 30 dealers, uh, websites, and we'd all make decent money. But I, I tell you, sean, and you'll know this and this goes back to those days and I think what we're missing now is that was a startup. We didn't raise money, we had no money. We had an idea, we had a few dealers paying us, we all gave ourselves these nice salaries and blah, blah, blah. No, we would wait for checks to come in the mailbox and we would run out every day and get those checks and we would sit down and say, look, my electric bill is. I got a week that they're going to turn me off. I need $267.
Speaker 2:Mike was like well, my water's dude, we lived. You talk about hand to hand to mouth. We lived mouth to floor. We were eating crumbs. One week I'd stay at Mike's house because my electricity was off. One week he'd stay at my house. He had no food. Dude, we roughed it. I mean, it was a struggle, but we knew we had a focus. We knew we had a unique product. They were flash. We were using flash.
Speaker 2:In the days of dial-up that was a no-no, but dealers freaking loved it. They got to see their name come in Back in the day. That was the greatest thing in the world. Yeah, so we used the websites. We made them entertaining, we made them animated so that it would engage the customer right. And it worked well enough where we kept selling, selling, selling, had our little office finally and started being able to pay the bills. But I tell you, we squatted in many a company's office for a year. I said, can we just borrow that back corner? I can't pay you anything but like this, that last cubicle where there's four of us, there's four poor seats in that cubicle, can we just use it and we'll buy you lunch once a week, like we? We did, we struggled, but it was. It was a struggle.
Speaker 1:How long do you think you were in that on the struggle bus in the early days before you got to? Oh my goodness, look at that. Now we've got 200 dealers all of a sudden. Now we can pay. How long were you in that era? About two years.
Speaker 2:Two years grinding. The purpose was back then, Sean, people were throwing millions, Petcom, the website. Now it's gone $100 million, $200 million. People were just throwing money at websites. But equity exchange, it was the boom.
Speaker 2:So we said the goal was retail yourself into at least proof of concept. Sell some dealers, get them on. Retail yourself into at least proof of concept. Yeah, Sell some dealers, show that you're you know, get them on. And when you go to raise money your first round, they're not going to beat you up so bad by saying have you sold this yet? Because if you say you haven't, you know equity goes up. So we wanted a proven product that was in the market, being sold, and we go to the investor and just say so. At at that point, to answer your question was probably about 200 dealers. And then 9-11 happened and that's when we tried to start raising money and nobody was giving money. Everybody was. No one knew what was going to happen yeah, economy war, whatever. So it took us a year and literally 99 presentations and we secured a half million dollar line of credit and we built that company on a half million dollars.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing. I mean, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:It was just you know, I mean, I'm a God-loving man. There was a lot of providential input there. Mike was a very, very Christian person. We, besides that, there was there we. We had that to help us get through it. And there were just some providential things. When we signed Anderson Honda at that time they were the largest Honda dealership in the United States and California. They saw one of our websites. We're a little company in Nashville.
Speaker 2:He's like well, how can I trust that you guys are going to? They said look, big dog. I remember he gave himself a nickname, big Dog Anderson. Anyone who gives themselves a nickname. You got to kind of you know, like okay, so Big Dog Anderson calls. Everybody knew Big Dog because he spoke at all the conferences. He had the biggest hunting store in the world before Norm Reeves, yeah. So we had his website and we said look, will, I won't even charge you. Yes, just if you don't trust us, great, Don't pay me until you trust us. Because I knew once we had that website, that was recognition. So once we had Anderson Honda, we made the map. We put out an ad in every magazine with Anderson Honda's homepage and just drove the competitors. Nuts Layton Judd called and threatened me personally. You know, I have people out there. I mean, it was just dude, it was like that. It was like we're going to kill you if you take our client. It was Wild West.
Speaker 1:Oh it was. It was so Wild West back then. All of the sales team from Cobalt. So wild west back then, all of the sales team from cobalt. Well, cobalt sales team got decimated when reynolds bought automark because they and I was, so I was in the microsoft carpoint leads team that also ended up doing a deal with cars direct. That also did a deal with kbb cars. They had a marketplace for that in the beginning. That all all started in that office in Seattle Washington with Peter Wilson and Rob Taylor, but the website side of it I wasn't in initially, although I got into it rather quickly. It was like that. Dave Marad, I'm trying to remember all the sales guys that were at Cobalt. There was a handful of them, jimmy Green maybe. Anyway, all of their top sales people end up coming over to that reynolds automark team and it the culture there was, it was wild west of like how they sold it was.
Speaker 1:I mean it, I don't want to say I don't want to say think wolf of Wall Street environment, but think Wolf of Wall Street kind of ish environment. And, by the way, for all of you you know, light in the pants kind of people. No one was getting hurt, like no one was. Like it wasn't like crimes or being, it was. But it was this Wild West mentality that, you're right, it did carry over into how these competitive sales teams would. I literally can almost hear layton's voice calling you and saying you know, layton is not that same guy today, but I mean, and maybe that's in him a little bit, um to this day yeah, I, I chat with him, uh, you know, pretty regularly as well, and we love to tell these old war stories as well I don't
Speaker 1:I don't think we have literally what everyone is living in today without all of those things happening, and it is. So maybe some people I'd have never heard anybody say they don't like the pioneer references or the comparison. And so don't ever say you don't like the pioneer references or the comparison, and so don't ever say you don't like it because it's really relative. I mean, if you watch, you know the Wild West, whatever your favorite Wild West stories like.
Speaker 1:I loved the TV series Hell on Wheels, where they kind of just the story of building the transcontinental railroad and everything that was going on then was very interesting culturally, you know, from so many different angles. But there were people that were trying to accomplish these things as pioneers that literally just got bit by a rattlesnake and died because they didn't know what they were venturing into or they got an illness that there was no cure for, but they still were trying, they were still part of something that ended up in well, we tell a much different story today, but we couldn't tell it without all of the blood, sweat and tears that goes.
Speaker 1:If you like, if you love to stay in the political side of these things relative to you know. Hey, what about EV credits and subsidies for era of how it started and how it was basically founded in the first place? It requires a whole lot of effort, smart people, courageous people, brave people to do things that get it to a point where you can build everything on top of this really, really solid foundation. And it's just fun hearing and talking through these stories with you because you are literally part of those things. So two years of Top Ramen, if that's all you had, and then you get a breakthrough. And so what was that kind of like? When you kind of you get a breakthrough, things are great. And then what was happening when you decided to move on from DealerSkins and was it Dealerskins into Datium? That's where I want to go next. Was it Dealerskins then Datium, or was there a point between Dealerskins before you decided oh, I got another idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question. And I tell my son now, who's 19, and he's desperately to figure out, like today, what path he wants to be on, what, what he wants to do from now. Until I said, bud, just get on a path, because that path is going to lead you to another path, that path is going to have a fork in it You're going to have. There's lots of paths, right, so I didn't. Right so I didn't.
Speaker 2:But back then things were happening, you know, so quickly and opportunities so just abounding. At that point, as internet grew, we, we, uh, the three of us, my, uh, me and my and the two other execs, we, we grew the company and I was the only salesperson. We did not hire a sales team and again, we were shoestring. So I sold, I think, the first 1100 websites and at that point we were profitable, nicely profitable. We had had our own office, very modest. The guy I hired for president was a penny pincher, so we didn't spend a lot of that half million. We chanced every chance he was chintzy, but that's good, uh, because we stretched that money out and we lived on that, that, that line of credit, until, uh, in 05 trader ventures.
Speaker 2:Ironically, by that time otter trader had grown into trader this trader that, this so they had trader ventures and they were out doing their acquisition thing in 05 and they approached us. You know it was bittersweet, sean, and I think you know, having done these things, we had built that company in a culture that was so cool. Everyone loved coming to work, right, it was that internet movie that you see about flip-flops and shorts and baseball and baseball hats. I mean it was hey, just just come as you are like, especially programmers. Like hey, if you want to come in at noon and work till eight, like you know, we're cool with that. So whatever works for you. Like it was just uh, you know it was a lifestyle. I mean it really. You, you took on this, this, this persona. As you know, I'm in the internet, right, and and no one else was at that time. So it was uh, you know it was fun. But so we built this beautiful company. We had beautiful retention. We were running like 92 retention because we had such great customer support. One thing we knew we had to have all that was very attractive.
Speaker 2:Short story trader made uh, trader publishing made a um, talk to them and dance for a while. They made an unreasonable offer from their side and back then we were young and young, dumb and broke right and you, you have that kind of conversation all of a sudden. So we did sell that company to uh, to what at that point? Trader publishing of a sudden. So we did sell that company to what at that point? Trader Publishing. That then became Dominion.
Speaker 2:I stayed on as a consultant for four years, sean, and post acquisition, as you said we alluded to earlier, you're trying to now force a blue tie, a blue jacket, khaki culture into a long hair, flip-flop, jogging, short culture. You know it was two ends of the spectrum that just didn't. So I wanted to maintain the culture of that company and the integrity of the product to our dealers. I was very proud of retention. So I desperately tried to hold on to that culture our employees and our dealers as long as I could, before the product just got watered down enough and to where it just was not the same product and obviously not the same people that we had started, and it was a hard realization. It was very, very hard to let go of that and to see your baby grow up, and I'm not saying go down the wrong path, but change a lot after they got on that big path right.
Speaker 2:So, it was heartbreaking really that company could have been. We could have kept it for a long time. It really could have been something even bigger, but we were kind of at a critical mass point. Could have been something even bigger, but we were kind of at a critical mass point. We could keep growing and keep throwing more money in it, or we could take use of their technology and their salespeople and everything and we could take that opportunity.
Speaker 1:So we did. Was Dominion already in DMS business at that time?
Speaker 2:No, that came soon after. But they bought two website companies. Xo was a little website company up in New England. They bought both website companies at the same time. But, sean, what happened in that time, in that four years? What I kept playing with was that's when I realized during that time the websites there was a lot of website companies. You remember there was always a new website company or two every year. Now there's not. I haven't seen a new website company pop up in probably 10 years, maybe less, but there was always a new website company because there was always new technology and new ways of doing it and better ways of doing it.
Speaker 2:But what I kept seeing was, now that we have 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 dealers, the data that was coming off those websites was incredibly intriguing. We were using that data to educate our dealers. Hey, did you realize that your homepage you know we're losing 52% of people from your homepage your bounce rate's high, right? We were using that data to consult the dealers and I said you know what that's? We can consult ourselves. Like get rid of every website template we have that has a higher than 52% bounce rate. Just get rid of them. There's something wrong with them. So we use the data, to educate ourselves, to make better websites. We were all bent on conversion.
Speaker 2:What are the hurdles to conversion from the website? Is it time on? Is it of clicks? Is it what? Is it above the fold? Below the fold? You know all those things, all those things that are now that the websites you see today are all derivatives of those, those ab tests, those trial and error. Right, it was you, don't? You don't put the inventory links below the scroll. No one's going to 17% of people scroll down. That's not very many. Put your inventory above. So all those rules, but I started seeing the data. The data, however, was self-fulfilling because it was our ecosystem, right? So if we had a bulk of Ford dealers, the data was always going to be weighted to four, unless we normalized it and did all this. So I thought, well, if we could harness data from multiple website platforms and then normalize it to one measuring scale, because back in the day, everyone was arguing about conversion. What do you consider conversion?
Speaker 2:Well we consider it a form lead. Well, we consider it a form lead. Well, we consider it a phone call. Well, how do you?
Speaker 2:So there was all this argument about our websites converted four times the national average. No, it doesn't. It's never, never going to. Conversion on any websites Always going to be about two or three percent. You can't double or triple that, it's just nature, right? So we kept trying to push that all. We've got a 10% conversion rate. No, you're counting people who click the Maps page? Right, companies would count that as a lead. And we're like no, no, no, we're talking form submissions, apples to apples.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to put out a measuring stick that everyone used the same measuring stick. No more bullshit. Stop lying to these dealers. Stop over selling your, your worth. They need you. Just tell the truth. Right, it's all what dealers want to know. Yeah, as long as we all know it, then we all can can work on it, right? So I just got frustrated with dealers just being beat over the head with report after report after report that all said something different, right, they were all self-fulfilling to the source of the report.
Speaker 2:So Datium was agnostic. We didn't care whose data, we didn't care who you were who your company was friend. No friend Dealers needed to know, apples to apples, which websites do convert the best. Why do they convert the best? Which traffic converts the best? Is it cars or auto trader? Which ad did I run? Was it a lease ad or a dollar figure? That data is so valuable. Even to this day, data is just being abused and used as a weapon as opposed to a tool, and I'll give you an interesting metaphor of what taught me this. Are you familiar with the Nobel Peace Prize? Are you familiar with Dr Nobel? Well?
Speaker 1:not at a deep level.
Speaker 2:I'm familiar with the prize, but for the audience tell us Dr Nobel invented dynamite so that we could build railroads to get goods and get people, connect people and get goods back and forth. That was a breakthrough in the Industrial Revolution to get goods and people from place to place, hence expanding our culture, expanding our civilizations. Railroads were a big part of it. When that was announced, it came out in the paper in London Dr Nobel invents the world's greatest killing machine. They saw dynamite. As we're going to win the war, we can now blow up anybody, anything we want. With this wonderful invention of dynamite we can blow stuff up.
Speaker 2:And Dr Nimble said no, no, no, this is for industrial, this is to get people from place to place. This is not a weapon. And he was disgusted at the fact of his legacy was going to be that he invented a killing machine that would blow people to smithereens. He didn't want that. All the money he made from the sale of the patent for that is today still funding the Nobel Peace Prize. He said I will be known for peace. Every bit of money I make on this dynamite don't want it. I want to give it to a scientist who is known that year for making something for peace. I'm going to promote peace, and I'm going to use every penny I made off of dynamite to do that, and I think you know what. There's a lesson there right.
Speaker 2:Dynamite can be used for good and bad, and back then data was being used to talk dealers into doing things that they just shouldn't be doing, or they shouldn't be buying Ads they shouldn't be running. So Datium was meant to be kind of the because they shouldn't be buying Ads, they shouldn't be running. So Daydium was meant to be kind of the metric system for the industry, so that we could have one central set of rules and the dealers would have the right data.
Speaker 1:I love that. The dealer skin's journey, including the struggle, bus years, led to the awareness of how important data would become, even in those days you and I both know because we've lived through it. In the beginning nobody talked about any of it, although it was all over the place and we knew how difficult it was. Like you talk about even the auto trader era of your career, it wasn't easy to just wire up an inventory feed back in those days, I mean there was all kinds of that.
Speaker 1:Most of that data actually was. None of it was real time or hey we'll, we'll update multiple times a day for you. Most of it was being passed back and forth through FTP right, the access to dial into DMS systems to get maybe a part of it and then pair it with images and like there was so much like. Today, anyone that's gotten into the industry really even probably in the last 15 years probably has no clue about what was required back then to do that with data. So the fact that the dealer skins journey parlays so perfectly into the next idea of being an agnostic, data-based company to help everyone, I love that. I did want to ask you regarding dealer skins. I think there were a couple of things that I have always given you credit for.
Speaker 1:Bz results came on the scene heavy and hard right, and they had to. Obviously, the folks that were behind the BZ results were the people that were behind Automark websites, but they had to stay out of the game, for I think it was a five-year clause, if I remember correctly, before they could come back in. And when they came back in, they came back in to do exactly what Reynolds didn't want them to do, which is compete on websites and all those you know the hot commodities that were still still young in the age, but they went full, flash, full like a hundred percent flash-based websites. But I never believed that they took that idea from their own think tank, that they were inspired by what was going on, largely, I think, by dealer skins. And they also took something that I think originated with you, which I think you guys used to call Redline, which was in my memory.
Speaker 1:It was the first virtual inventory model out there. So a dealer that would say we're rural, so we don't have the type of inventory on the ground that our counterpart in the metro has, but we could still sell these people cars. Even back then people would say, hey, even if you wanted to order one, the factory doesn't always like that as much as they used to. Back when I remember when my dad special ordered a 1978 Bronco. Back when I remember when my dad special ordered a 1978 Bronco.
Speaker 1:The first time that it came back after a big you know, I guess they reworked it, remodeled that thing. But that era of, hey, we don't, we don't have the same amount of inventory Well, you guys, I think, were the pioneers of the idea of. You know, a virtual inventory could work really well, especially because the dealers at that point had already been addicted to lead generation. We need leads, we need leads, we need leads, yeah, Okay. Well, that was a brilliant idea. To both say to a consumer hey, yeah, we sell all these vehicles and here's a way to have that Any, any. Does this lead you to any thoughts around? And was I right? Do you think that and this isn't to like, I don't know, BZ, whatever, but were you guys really the inspiration? Do you think you guys were the ones that kind of gave BZ the idea? Let's go full hardcore on flash builds. And they also did a lot with virtual inventory modeling on their websites and they became the hot ticket, growing faster than wildfire for quite a period there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I tell you that's, and you're right, that's when you know we get to see the whole thing, the whole evolution of it. Reynolds and Audemars website company is who. When we saw those websites, that's what we wanted to do. So we were inspired by automark because they were different than cobalt. They were colorful and they had some motion and they they were laid out better. So we we not to say we copied, but we were inspired by it. We wanted to be, we wanted to compete with automark and not cobalt. Right, I see bz was the same way. They wanted to compete with us and not the cobalt of the world. They wanted a better looking website, a flashier website. I think the big difference was our sites were meant to capture the attention of the consumer. Their sites were meant to capture the attention of the dealer. Right, and that was always the argument back then is who are you selling Like? What is what are you selling the dealer? Or is your website really sell the consumer on the car? Right?
Speaker 2:so I always made that argument, often to no avail, that, uh, you know, you're, you're building a pro, you're building a shiny object because you, you know dealers like that, right, but it's got to function. It still has to drive and turn and stop and, you know, just like any other car. So I kind of feel like it was and it grew so fast, right, because dealers love those websites. Now do consumers love them? It's the same argument, right? How easy is it to find a car? How easy is it? So I'm flattered if we did inspire them, because everyone was pushing the envelope at that point, right?
Speaker 2:We were inspired by Audemars, they were probably inspired by us. Everybody could do it a little bit better. They had more money, you know. So inevitably someone was going to take that idea and go with it. So we had a lot of interesting run-ins with those guys too. It was, you know, going back to your point, any da's like you could hear that. You could hear the different teams were doing their you know cheerleading chance before any da right. Like you know, we were out to get each other.
Speaker 2:You know it was like a rugby game yes where we would chant against each other. You know, it was like fighting each other after the show there are a few of those that went down. Actually there were a few fisticuffs, right it was like, and it was all over the business, like our team bettered yours, yeah it got ugly imagine loving your we are our websites for car dealers.
Speaker 1:Imagine loving your team and your company so much that it pours over into hey, we're all at nada and you might all be at the same somebody's corporate party. And then there's a like, and it's a FU, and it's like oh yeah, like next thing, you know, there's a little bit of a dust up. Oh yeah, there were absolutely stories like that, for sure.
Speaker 2:It was. You had to go to different locker rooms. You know you had to go on different out different doors.
Speaker 2:If going out different doors, if you're going out in Vegas at night, I mean it was you know it was so we'd see them out and they'd see us out and everybody would have had their shots. But you know, I'm flattered if they wanted to outdo us. They had mentioned several times that that was their goal, that they would rather see us gone than in the business. They were very honest, which I can appreciate. But the configurators which you're referring to and that was really cool Back in the day we're going to say that a lot If a dealer didn't have a new car in stock, you could build one. You could go into the configurator and choose the make and model and color. It would change the color of the picture. You could add the options and put. The people love configurators because inventories were low. They wanted to spec theirs out to your point, thinking they could actually order that car. You know, and you had to be careful with configurators because we had to have the logic built in where if it has sports package, then you can't add 18 inch rims in the roof rack because that's in the sports package, right? So, configurators world, you could. You could build a car that you would never see, right? Yeah, they were misleading. Yep, honda, because of big dog, honda, anderson, honda. He wanted a honda configurator.
Speaker 2:Honda's come to the United States basically stripped of options. Most of their options are port installed. So even on the build data that we were getting, we didn't know that that car had a sunroof or a spoiler or the 18-inch rims until it was port installed. We got the data after they reached the United States and had those options installed and we built our own Honda configurator. So for a while there we had the first and only build your Honda configurator that was actually used on Hondacom, which was pretty cool because it was.
Speaker 2:It was a big deal to be able to to to spec out a car that was actually viable, like that you would do. That you could actually go out and get. Yeah, versus a configurator leading you to a dealer and the dealer saying you're never going to have a forerunner with two roof racks, like they don't build them, like you know. So it was. We thought we had really put what we did, put a lot of time and effort into the logic of those configurators, which I think there again at that time kind of set the bar on that particular tool absolutely, because there was the accommodation for honda and there was also toyota right set with southeast toyota right.
Speaker 1:I remember being in seattle, you know, young in this game, and people trying to explain to me the different configuration capabilities. If it was a southeast toyota, yeah, unit and I was like time, I was like I didn't know who Jim Moran was. I had no idea Like what, what's that. But I got very part of my Reynolds career. Actually Southeast Toyota for a decent period of time was actually my client. So I ended up spending a lot of time in Deerfield beach and it was fascinating. In fact I've been in those facilities of where the actual cars come in and all of a sudden you're like, well, what else could they do? I remember stories like you can't get leather in an LE Camry right. Well, if it's STT you can. And I literally remember being in the factory watching them doing the pulls of cloth interior and putting in the leather interior. Like there is no brand new toyota vehicle that you can buy that comes with bbs rims.
Speaker 1:I'm like, yes, there is if you got it from an set store or through set's distribution, just really, really fascinating part of of the industry that a lot of people newer people to it now don't really know that if that's not, you know part of your wheelhouse and what you do in the car business, but back then, when we talk about all these things that had to be done for the very first time, there was a lot of that, and the vehicle configurators in the very beginning, yeah, they didn't factor for that, and so you could get yourself in a predicament of like wait, you know, I mean, think about even the configuration of what still, to this day, is talked about. Quite a bit is like how do you account for all the variation of ford, f-150, chevy, tahoe, gmc, yukons, like it's just, all of these takes me way back. I wanted to also mention, though, that I love the, the datium period, and that you guys took that piece into the industry. I probably miss having and there are probably today, people that would think, well, we're the modern day data. Maybe some people think that I love what actually what Todd Smith is doing with his new company, core AI. I think he's onto something really, really big there of like freer data. I saw his post recently maybe it was today of what they are capable of doing, getting all of this stuff out of silos and into one place, and then really great insights.
Speaker 1:But when you guys were in that, I don't you think that there's still a bunch of those points that are still relevant today, things that, like years past, when you would say, well, hey, only 30% of your vehicles that are on your website actually have images.
Speaker 1:What's up with that? And then the correlations that you could draw from the absence of photo means that, well, the chances that no one's even going to click on that video, let alone submit a lead on it, or you get a phone call on it and go completely into the tank. Those points of data were always really, really important, but there was a long period of time when you had no visibility to any of it. You guys get into that visibility, and part of it Do you still see today. I guess my question would be from a co-founder of Datium and knowing how important that was, and today, what are your thoughts on data today? Is it still like oh my goodness, it's still, and then some? Or what are your general thoughts there? Are we still nowhere near where we need to be to help dealers actually utilize the tons of data that they have, that they should be making decisions with.
Speaker 2:It's an awesome question, sean, and it's a sore spot because and I'll tell you why what we accomplished with datium was we wanted to bring big data down to the, to the dealer level, to the street level. Right, the data was coming down as far as the vendor level and then the vendors would manipulate that data into a weapon to use against the dealer. So my goal, my thought, was there's only one group of people in this industry who need to benefit from that data and it's the dealer. They're so far removed from getting data from outside their four walls because the guy down the street is not going to share his sales data. The guy across the street is not going to sell his sales data, share it. So there had to be a way to use cross-platform data to give dealers an analysis that they've never had before, because they get data from this vendor, they get report from this vendor, they get a report from this vendor, and not that it's those vendors' fault, but their data is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's your data, is going to tell you what your environment tells you. If I look out my window and tell you the data of my day, that's not your day. That's the data from my window right, and I can only see out this one window, but I think we've reverted. That company was also purchased by IHS, who also purchased Polk Data, and I'm saddened to this day that we did not accomplish what we were so close to accomplishing, and that is a standardized data system in this industry which everyone had to adhere to at least by some standard, so that dealers couldn't get lied to with data, especially back in those days when conversion rates A dealer shouldn't pay $3,000 to switch websites because you talked him into your website, converting it four times the national average. How did you? How did you do that Right? Explain to me how you did it. Yeah, and you couldn't Right. So to me, that's the biggest failure of my career is not letting that go further, because the data was so by.
Speaker 2:I could tell dealers in their used car inventory based on the massive amounts of data that we had, by having all these people working together to share data, not people's personal data. It's crowd data, crowdsourcing, 2%, confidence. Here's the used cars that are going to be selling in your market in the next 60 days because of lead data and traffic data today. That data because vehicle acquisition is still one of the biggest problems for dealers Used cars, getting good quality pre-owned cars, because you have, the car market is scarfing them up. You have, you know everybody wants the quality used cars. Where are you going to get them? So that data to know what cars, to even go after that, are going to sell quickly, that one piece of data can save billions of dollars in this industry, from wholesale losses to fees buying the wrong car in the first place. It was so valuable.
Speaker 2:My goal with Datium was that I could drop the mic after that and say we changed the industry. We brought truth and justice to the industry through the use of normalized, formalized data, not figures that are being thrown around like darts. Right, it's dangerous to do so. I feel bad that it didn't go further, but I can tell you also, it almost killed me and this goes back to kind of the pioneer days and we were the first ones that were really doing that. Now you know as well as I do we've been collecting data on people on the Internet since day one.
Speaker 2:Yep, before the Internet, you could go down to your DMV and buy registration data. Say, I want everybody's name and address in this county who owns a Toyota and they'd sell it to you. Right, that's data. You can go buy it out the back door. Yep, I spent a week in New Jersey. New Jersey subpoenaed us. They sent a lawsuit saying we will not let you do business in New Jersey because we protect our citizens. It's New Jersey talking. You've been to New Jersey. You've been there Enough times that I don't. I'll just say we protect our citizens.
Speaker 1:It's New Jersey talking. You've been to New Jersey. You've been there Enough times that I don't.
Speaker 2:I'll just say, yeah, I've been there, oh, it was hilarious, oh, we love it. We protect our citizens. We're not going to let you collect data from anyone in our state because we don't want their name and address being published. So I spent a week in New Jersey with their district attorney and my attorney racking up money explaining how, when we're collecting data, we don't know who these people are. I don't even know who user 58463. We're crowdsourcing. I don't care who they are. I want to see what all these people are doing and I don't have time to even ask their name, and it doesn't matter anyway to me. I want to see do these Ford shoppers buy? What's their travel? And I can do that without knowing who they are. I don't care. And they saw your history sniffing. That was illegal. That was dubbed illegal, where you could actually surf someone's history in their browser. You could basically hack their computer. I said no, we're not history sniffing. That's been against the law. That's like you can't build a company on something that's illegal. Well, you can but I didn't.
Speaker 2:A week with New Jersey, a week with the FTC, they were next. They filed Sean, I was in uncharted waters, I mean you know me, I'm no genius.
Speaker 2:I didn't graduate freaking Yale over yonder and I'm in the midst of these legal battles of data collection and intellectual property and people's personal information personal identical property. I said we don't collect any data. I lost 40 pounds. I was flying all over the country and I'll tell you what the wake-up call was when I found myself face down in the men's room at Midway Airport. Now, if you ever go to Chicago, typically O'Hare is where you want to be. I'd fly into Midway because it was cheaper, but Midway is a third-world country in the United States. That airport you could see goats going down the freaking runways.
Speaker 1:Been there.
Speaker 2:I was so stressed out, hadn't eaten Starbucks Cinnabon, starbucks, cinnabon. Finally, I was exhausted, coming back and found myself face. Let me tell you there's one place you don't want to find yourself face down and that's in a men's room at midway airport. There's germs there that we eradicated in the freaking 1800s. It's awful. So I'll wake up in the infirmary at midway I'm like dude, am I in? Tijuana. Like what, the like what. What has happened? They said we can't let you fly if you have a concussion. I was like no, you don't understand I gotta get to.
Speaker 2:I got legal stuff. You know I gotta go. You're like, sir, you gotta you're not going anywhere. So I had realized I had worked. And this is one one thing to the to these you know other other people, if there was advice, don't let it kill you. You know, like when you're out of out of your boat, when you're in in uncharted war, that that company could have been so great. But I had to fight the battle, and I'm not saying this me, but our. We had to fight that.
Speaker 2:For that initial battle we had to clear the path, like the legal path, and I told the district attorney in new. I said if I came to you and wanted to buy registration data of your citizens that you protect, you're so proud of protecting, could I buy registration? New Jersey sells more registration data than any state in the country. I knew that, going into this question, you can buy whatever you want and they're like well, we don't sell. I said, said, sir, you sell registration data of your people. They don't know it. Nowhere on your website does it say when you register your car, we will sell your data to any tom, dick and harry that comes by and asks for it. Nowhere does it give that disclaimer. And you're asking me if I give a disclaimer that we're collecting data.
Speaker 2:You've been selling registration data for 30 years. Experian everybody sells data. I'm not selling data, so it was. I apologize for getting upset, but it was it about killed me Because that argument was so already settled. You're selling data, right, I'm not even doing what you're doing in the back of the same office. So we had to get with Datium. It got to the point where, yes, we were doing the right thing. A lot of companies didn't want us anywhere in that industry. People don't want you turning the light on in the basement.
Speaker 1:For me, that's what I loved about about Datium.
Speaker 1:That's what I loved about you being there and you guys doing that. It was I mean you guys and we don't need to go deep into this, but I mean there are in. In every industry there's at least one, but usually more than one, organization that gives out an annual award for some achievement, and most of them are and how do I be delicate with this, so people don't get mad at me Most of them are more valuable If your company is awarded one, most of them. The biggest value is really that it becomes something that you can use in your marketing tactics and check out all the awards we've won. You guys at least at the time I felt were maybe the only one, and at the time it wasn't just you guys. There were a couple of things that you could win as a service provider or a vendor in the automotive industry that you sell services to dealers different categories. Vendor in the automotive industry that you sell services to dealers different categories but I love the fact that you guys it was like this is the data. In a lot of other cases when companies are winning awards, it has little and sometimes nothing to do with data, and I know because some of them have told me. They don't like it when I say some of the things I'm about to say. But right now, when you have people going to NADA and talking about their new job role and how, now at their new job role, what they do, whatever it is right. They sell cookies to car dealers and now their cookies this is the best cookie that's ever been made on planet Earth, and that is not true cookie that's ever been made on planet earth. And that is not true. They believe that they sell the best cookies to dealers on planet earth because that's where they fucking work. Now. That's the uniform they put on, that's the jersey of the new team they play for. Okay, I get it and I tell. Try to tell people all the time. I've been that person before. Right, I take a job.
Speaker 1:I was one of Reach Local's biggest adversaries and critics in the automotive industry, and the two guys that started their automotive division knew that, knew enough that they came and saw me speak one day and then, instead of deciding like, well, we want to fight with this guy, they wanted to befriend me. They wanted to learn from me and that's how they won me over to get the opportunity to show me what they really did at the time. And anyone who was wanting to demonize them I would. Once I knew enough, I would take offense to it because I'm like oh no, you don't understand what they have built. And you don't understand, oh, by the way, because dealercom was able to live under the guise of we've got our own paid search that we're selling long before total control dominators Stupid, freaking name. But long before they built that, they learned how to build that or make a different mechanism, which essentially was a trap to kind of trick dealers into just dial up the number of leads you want, and then there's how much you need to pay us.
Speaker 2:That's cute.
Speaker 1:But when I got to reach local even on their advisory board before I took a full-time position with them, I knew the truth about what they were capable of. I also knew that the biggest check being written for lots of paid search was done by a company called dealercom. Right, there was a website back in the day you could go to. It was like ddcsemcom or something like that. And all these years later I'm not trying to throw shade on dealercom, it's just all the things that people didn't know and I took a job there thinking, okay, this is really great, but I actually knew the data behind it. When I got really excited, there were other things that made it difficult in the years that I was there excited. There were other things that made it difficult in the years that I was there.
Speaker 1:My point, going back to awards and what you guys did with Datium, is during your run, when you guys started to recognize companies for achievements, I loved the fact that it was all based on data. Right, it was based on data and standards of that data that were applied to anybody in the category. So if you want a website award or whatever award you were doing and I thought that was so critical, and I wish there was more of that today and maybe some of the people that have awards in the industry. Maybe they've added some things that are data related, but I don't know of, and so if anybody watching this episode knows that there is an objective, completely agnostic data gathering company right now that can take all the data from every single website provider that wants to participate so that we could really find out who is the best website provider in the industry, you know I'm going to choose my words carefully here. If you're a dealer that has to choose from a group of website providers that has already been pre-selected for you because they're in program with the companies that are management companies again, not saying I love that or I hate that or whatever, just saying that's the reality.
Speaker 1:There are companies that have digital programs that make it easier for them to do. You know, manage the programs on behalf of the dealers and OEMs, and I get all that. There's a lot of data that happens in those relationships, but I don't think that any of the suppliers that end up in program are there because of points of data that ever get disclosed to the market so that people could make decisions based on, well, these websites. On average, they actually do convert half a point higher, and half a point actually is extremely significant. And oh, by the way, here's all the other micro points of data that lead up to this macro data point.
Speaker 1:That would give you confidence that if that's the thing that you need to fix at your dealership or on your dealer website, well that's a really good reason to consider us. And you could do that across all of the providers, like, if you want to be where, we want to be the best DMS, we want to be the best CRM, we want to be the best paid search, we're the best in SEO, we're the best in. Right now, dealers still are like inundated with an arsenal of messaging of why people think they're the best absent of of messaging of why people think they're the best.
Speaker 1:Yes, absent of well, prove it. You have all of this fucking data that you've had for fucking decades and it's not used against everyone in an agnostic standard to say well, we can actually judge who's the best. There is no regular season followed by playoffs, followed by Super Bowl for website providers in our industry, Right, right. So if you want to stand there and plant your flag on we're the best and we're the, you know we're the chiefs of automotive websites, ok, well, the chiefs. Prove it by how many touchdowns they score and wins and games they win, and all this and guess what, sometimes, using my football analogy that I've stumbled into sorry, I'm getting passionate. I'll get off my soapbox right after this.
Speaker 1:But, sometimes Patrick Mahomes doesn't throw more touchdowns than Josh Allen. Sometimes he doesn't throw for more yards. They did it some other way. But it's all data related of how they're going to use their offensive schemes, their defensive schemes, their special teams themes and how they're going to win games, and that doesn't happen, probably in most industries, but in our industries, and I felt like you guys were really the closest thing to an agnostic data provider where people could at least find the truth Right now. It's you just said it Data oftentimes and Dennis Gelbrath is the first person I ever heard say you can torture the data until it confesses yes, right, yes, that's still the truth today, and dealers often are the ones that get the short end of the stick on all of this comes when we're like we can finally like okay, now we really can let the dealer's very own data, coupled with the provider's data, actually get to the point where gosh, we should have released this so that these dealers could be living their best lives and running the most profitable businesses that they've ever run.
Speaker 1:Are we ever going to get there? Because we could be so much better than we are now and yet we're not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's where we were going to. Yes, we can get there if someone is willing to pick up that ball and continue on with it. Because here's the thing, sean, there were a lot more people that didn't want us in the industry than did. That was the problem, and that's a shame, right? It was much harder for some companies with us being around than it was before we came around. You know, if they say we're going to raise your leads 248%, who's going to call them wrong? Let me tell you, nothing happens. 248%, I don't. It just doesn't happen, right, and lead conversions especially. So you know, there wasn't enough rally cry from people who had enough voice to allow us to keep doing what we were doing. And here's the funny thing Having worked at a dealer all those years, going back to those first eight years of selling Toyotas, I realized that the turn and earn allocation model is absurd.
Speaker 2:I was a six-month salesperson and I was like, why do they do it that way? If you sell 18 forest green Corollas, they're going to send you 18 more forest green corollas. They're gonna send you 18 more forest green corollas, like logic tells you at some point. We, everyone who wants a forest green corolla, has one, because we've. We just sold 48 in two months.
Speaker 2:There's got to be something we're missing, right, what? What are we? What do we don't know. And that is what are people shopping for that we don't have on the lot? Right, there's got to be a better way to get car, because the biggest expense in an OEM and whether they lie to you or not is incentive money. They put on the hoods of cars that don't sell. Billions and billions of dollars giving away that you've already made, spent back to a consumer because you had a two-wheel drive dodge ram in michigan for a year, when it's gotta be four-wheel drive, baby, it's michigan, right?
Speaker 2:So my goal, I was gonna die. My headstone was gonna say eliminated, turn and earn inventory and I was going to be carried around by dealers on a golden casket and OEMs. So it can be done and everybody wins Distribution costs, go down your incentive money, keep your incentive money, keep your billions of dollars and bonus your employees. You know, it's just I get. So it seemed so obvious, sean, when you go to oem, you know and you're like don't you get it? Like that was the punchline, like I just gave you the punchline, do you get it? And they're like so yeah, no, so we. So we just stop doing, turn it earn, yeah, yeah, the disconnect is is amazing, and so I tried. You know, one man, two men trying to change the world. It's a hard task, you know, jesus did, but but I it.
Speaker 2:That's a hard gig.
Speaker 1:Imagine all of the, the program management companies if that was the model from the beginning is like we need to have the very best elite providers based on data points, how much pain and suffering they would have saved their own dealers, or from the OEM perspective, when they're like and that's a. We could do a whole podcast on all of that and probably get myself.
Speaker 2:You know what's painful that process is.
Speaker 1:I mean that's freaking, yeah Right, paying for that process is I mean, that's freaking, yeah right instead of the real methodology of typically the way that uh, companies get into program. You know and I would just say this, for vendors too that might be listening to this it's like, even though this isn't the way you're gonna necessarily get in, if you're, if you're gonna have to, you know the success of of what you, your dreams of your company, are gonna to like. We won't be able to ever see our dream come true unless we get in some of these programs, or all of the programs, and you and I have been through that, right. We've been, we've been at a company at the same time that was chasing hard and did a really good job in getting on all of those programs, yep. Reality, though, is for a company that's trying to think about how are you going to navigate all that? Right now, you should still be laser focused on providing the very best, like being best in class, like number one. If you can be number one, if you can be vanilla right, say what you want about vanilla. If you can be vanilla, you're going to win right, because there's still more people slinging out scoops of vanilla than there are of rocky road like. So stay laser focused on being the very, very best in your category and if you can be even in the top three, you always have a shot at winning. Yeah, if you have to play that route of like we got to get in a program, it'll help you more than it will hurt you, for sure, but it'll also keep you in a place where you might be able to not have to do some of that If you're not best in category, like if you rank 10th among the 20 providers. Forget it. You really have to be focused on we're going to be the best at what we're doing.
Speaker 1:I want to fast forward into because I haven't asked you nearly enough about kind of what you're doing these days at flick fusion and so your role at flick fusion, um, very video centric company, been around a long time, um, and so I'm curious at this point in 2025, how do you, when you think about the transformation of video um in automotive? There's been a lot that's happened. I think there's still a lot that still can happen. I think data supports that. Just look at the number of people who spend time on YouTube compared to any of their other streaming services. It's ridiculous. But what are your thoughts there? Tell me a little bit about that and your role, and how do you kind of see video, its progression and where it's at and where you think maybe it may still need to go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I tell you, I always like talking to you, Sean, because you know the industry so well, you know what to ask, right?
Speaker 1:Don't tell anybody.
Speaker 2:Well, more people should pick your brain because it's you know I said, how I mentioned earlier, one path leads to another. I didn't think all this stuff up, I'm not that smart, but it's just the path. Paths led to different paths and I got um, I got burnout. We'll say. I'd been in the industry for a while, done all the speaking gigs, and just got burnout and took some time off, thought about do I retire now, do I wait? So I, like an idiot, opened my own used car lot.
Speaker 2:I always wanted to. That's my passion for cars. I wanted to have my own little lot sell some high end used, but mainly some classics, affordable classics, you know things that cars that guys like me always dreamed about could at least afford and go to the car show and take their family but not have to drop 150 grand on a you you know all original Chevelle right. So I always wanted to try it and me, with all my wonderful experience, thought that I could actually pull it off. But the other part of that was either it's going to turn into and it was in our little hometown outside, about 22 miles outside of Nashville, so I didn't have that competition. I had my own little world, a little town to deal with and it was Broadway Motor Company. It was going to be a nice little high-end place.
Speaker 2:So for the first two years we were doing great. I had a five-star rating on Facebook and you know, in the car business that's hard to do. But I just did things different. I did it the way I did it 30 years prior and that is just be yourself. Be nice, tell people I don't care if you buy or not, I'm here to help you find the car. I don't have it, don't buy it. Just be real and be funny and be real and it'll happen. So we did it. We had a great reputation. The other part was if this doesn't work, I'll find the next gap in this industry, like, where is it? I've got to get back to it. And that's what these days used to every company that was in the Internet that I recall most everyone they they come out of the car business. Those people had sold a car. We all had that experience. We didn't have MBAs or doctorates, but by God we had freaking PhDs and hard knocks.
Speaker 2:We spent time on the front lines getting shot at selling cars. You know the objective. So I went back to the used car lot and I said there's got to be something. There's 60,000 used car dealers in America. We're missing something. And what I realized was it's gotten so far from the fundamentals, from back in the day before the Internet or right at the beginning of the Internet. And it got me thinking about those websites we used to build, sean.
Speaker 2:People were consumers, were intimidated to go on a website because it was new for them. Where do I click? Where's the? How do I find a car? And I remember building websites and the template was it's as easy as one, two, three. And the template was it's as easy as 1, 2, 3. And it had a big 1, find your car. 2, schedule an appointment. 3, whatever. It was like. We had to convince the shopper that this is the next best way to buy a car and it's going to be as easy as 1, 2, 3. Don't be scared of the internet. Click here to view cars, click here to tell us about your trade--in and here to make an appointment. You know we, we made it simple because people were like ah, there's too many buttons. What is this internet gonna do? Blah, blah. So I remember, and we've gotten so far from that. Right it's, it's. You go on an srp now an SRP page and it looks like a bad swap meet dude. There's 16 buttons on every listing. You got Black Book, blue Book, I think there's. The Beatles' White Album is on there for some freaking, I don't know, it's just there and none of the buttons are the same. You know, and you have two different trade tools. You get two different values and you're like man, this is so to your point.
Speaker 2:When I was at the dealership, the one thing that set me apart from everyone else in that little town was the videos I took of my cars. That was the only way I was going to compete or out-compete. I had a small lot. I was kind of on the edge of town. No one really went that way unless they were going to Kentucky, so I had to get people to my part of town and it was the video I made. Awesome, I used the Flick Fusion product because it was integrated with Dealer Track at my little used car lot and it was so easy to use. It was integrated. All I had to do was just pull the car up, take pictures, take my own video.
Speaker 2:And I was making, I was sneering right and I was making it funny, like, oh, here's one you'd be proud to call your mother-in-law. This one here is a low mileage, you know just, you know little fun, little things in there, and then I always had a little catchphrase. So I was kind of famous in that little tiny town. You know people were like, oh, I've seen your videos on Facebook and it's like great. So that you know I realized it's not anything new, there's no, it's using the old stuff, it's going back to good pictures of cars, good merchandising, good salesmanship and good closing ability. I mean, it still requires a good salesperson and a good marketer to make a deal happen, right. So I think we've gotten so far from A companies who are being run by people who never sold a car because you just don't get it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I remember even dealer skins. When you got hired you spent a week at Beeman Automotive here in town. You spent one week nine to five, and A it's going to make you appreciate every other job you ever have. And B it's going to make you understand your job a lot better. These guys work hard. So I see, just from, just that's why I went.
Speaker 2:And here's the funny thing tim james has been running flick fusion for years. Timmy was. He and I competed on websites. Back in the day he was selling a competitor's website. He saw ours.
Speaker 2:He was bad mout to me out but and it was like that cartoon that the, the, the sheepdog and the coyote, right, ralph and sam, yeah, yeah, you know he's all day trying to get one of those sheep and the sheepdogs and they go. There's a time clock on the tree, remember. They both clock out. Yeah, all around each other. Go have a beer, right? That's what we used to do. We used to just beat each other up all day. And then timmy was one of those guys that, even even though he was a competitor, he was a genuine dude. He was honest, fun and trustworthy and we respected each other and we'd go have a beer and talk about family. You know, like we were still real people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when I left that little deal, I said to me I I don't know if you have room. I said but I realize, I realize now how important your product is and I apologize, I'm in the industry and it took me this long to realize. That's the one thing that kept me going in that little dealership. Covid is what shut me down. I couldn't make. It wasn't big enough to make it through COVID. After the shutdown there wasn't a human on that lot for months and I just kept seeing my life savings just just tumble. But I did. What came out of that was two things. I went and worked with car wars, which was the original, which is today's who's calling right same software?
Speaker 2:yeah because I realized if I had someone to answer that phone and answer it good enough to get someone to come in, and if I could merchandise. So the phone skills and merchandising skills were the two things I found that were the most important. Go figure, the two things that dealers have known for years Interesting the vendors have overcomplicated all of that. So to your point, I went to Timmy and said I realize now how important video is for everything Testimonials after the fact introducing me as the local dealer. And I'm not your typical local dealer. And here's why. That's why people came to me because of that video. I come from corporate world, right, but I hate going to buy cars and that's why I opened Broadway Builders. So it was my way to get in. I dominate this little town. Even in the manufacturer dealers we're like what is this freaking guy doing? He's got like 25 cars down there. You know, you would think he was a you know big, big dog. Anderson.
Speaker 1:But I love that yeah.
Speaker 2:I just realized we're so far from we have. We have complicated it for dealers and now it's our job to clean it up for dealers. In my opinion, Get back to the fundamental cornerstones.
Speaker 1:I love that you were a customer of I didn't I didn't put that two and two together that you were a customer of Flick Fusion before you went to work for them. Yeah, you know people talk about, you know testimonials and customer stories and you know the. It's like the. I used to love to watch the VH1 behind the music or whatever like the backstory of all these. You know because I've been a music guy forever. That's what you just shared is kind of a little piece of that like behind the music, if you will, and I think it's powerful because you were somebody who realized how valuable it was in what you were doing, even in the heyday of that business, before COVID comes along and kind of kills the dream. But the fact that it was also with somebody that you knew and then now you end up in that role, I think that's just awesome. I love that.
Speaker 1:The next couple of things I was going to ask you you kind of shared in that answer, so I'm going to move ahead just a little bit and just maybe some more of your personal thoughts around things like I know that the car business means a lot to you personally and I know that, as we've even been talking about this.
Speaker 1:Like you and I have a lot of, I think, similar things that stoke the passion, the appreciation, the respect for the industry, everything we've learned, how we've parlayed that into other things that we've done inside the career and inside the industry. But you and I are both also in an in a stage in career where we probably are thinking about, like the legacy that you're thinking, like, what do you when you're, when you're leaving behind these future generations of of people that are some who are in it right now, some who still won't be in it but do you think about that much? If you do, what would you think you want to leave behind? What do you want the industry to be thinking about you when you're not in it anymore?
Speaker 2:That's a tough question, sean, I know, sorry. No, it's good because I thought there would be more collaboration between Gen 1 and Gen 2 companies in this industry. I thought there would be more melt over, right, but it seems like there's a great divide between these companies and then this group of companies, and there's just no. I don't see the integration. Maybe I'm wrong just because I don't work, and there's just no, I don't see the integration. And maybe I'm wrong just because I don't work. But I know from where I'm sitting. I'm not working with these newer companies. I don't see a lot of them coming to us saying let's work together.
Speaker 2:You know, I've always felt like and with Datium, one plus one equals three right, if you find a good company to integrate with, you can come up with a better idea, a better mousetrap. Right, and Brian used to always preach it, pash, you know, work together, integrate. You know, putting our video platform in a CRM, it's not just cool, it's a must for dealers. You know it's like oh, we don't have the time on the roadmap to do that. Oh, we don't have to spend. I'm not asking you. If you want to do it, ask your dealers. You know it's like we're forgetting. This was always something I think in our generation. Sean was much more relevant, much more noticeable, is who pays our bills? Who pays my meals? Yeah, these dealers, right, it's their success that should be on our mind, much less our top priority, right, and they're getting taken advantage of and you see it so much and that's why they're so hard to sell and they have the chip on their shoulder. We made them that way because we sold them fish oil for 40 years. Snake oil yeah, they're going to be leery. They've been beat up with data. They get caught all day, every day. If you go see a dealer, you've got to come strong, quick, to the point, and you better have something that's going to make them money. You've got to show it. If you can't, you're in the wrong fucking business. Excuse my french, don't bullshit these guys. Yeah, they don't have time for it. Yeah, so being? I think that's what you get by working at a dealership.
Speaker 2:I've always said every high school grad is a choice military for a year or car business for a year. They're both going to teach you that your ass is going to get up at the crack of dawn and you're going to work until the sun goes down Six, maybe seven days a week. People you don't like. You're going to be yelled at. You're going to be pushed around. You're going to be belittled in the tough survive. Right, you get one year in each business.
Speaker 2:Everything else will seem easier. First of all, every other job you're going to be great at because you just went through hell, but you'll have an understanding of that job. They're the best salespeople in the world and they get treated like the worst enemy, your worst enemy. It's a tough gig. It's a tough job. It's a tough gig. It's a tough job.
Speaker 2:And I've always thought you know, if you can make my job easier as a dealer, you're my best friend and that's the way they think. Like, make my job easier. Dude, this life is hell. Help me make my life better so I don't drink myself to death Highest alcoholism rate. Or shoot myself in the head. Highest suicide rate Right, it's a tough business. Highest alcoholism rate. Or shoot myself in the head Highest suicide rate Right, it's a tough business. And these younger companies go spend a week. Ask your client to go spend just a hangout for a week. They'll respect the hell out of you for it and you'll come home white as a sheet with your eyes like saucers and you're going to hug your wife and say I've got to change my direction. I've got to. This company is more important than I thought, or it needs to be. I might have gotten off topic.
Speaker 1:No, no, you literally just gave such a huge piece of advice. I didn't even have to ask you hey, well, what advice would you give? You just gave it. Help dealers, make it easier for them, make it easier for them to operate their store. Make it easier for the general manager to understand your stupid technology that doesn't even solve any of his problems. Oh wait, don't do that, because then they'll fire you Like no.
Speaker 1:But tell people the truth, tell the dealer the truth. And also, I mean, what an amazing comparison. Maybe I've been living under a rock. I've never heard anybody so well articulate the comparison of hey, graduated high school, you don't want to go in the military, ok, go work for a car dealership. You're going to get a relatively similar, very, very similar experience. It's hardcore. You are going to be belittled. You're not going to be treated fairly. You're going to work with people that you hate and they hate you, and you're going to have to figure out if you're tough enough to make it through.
Speaker 1:But what does it do? It literally is the refining fire that basically turns out people who are massively capable. They're hardened. Some of them end up still with their attributes of kindness and their sensibilities, and their emotional intelligence stays intact. And those are the superstars that we are all living in an industry with right now and those are the ones that will be in the future. But especially these older generations and you know what, jason, even for you and I, the generations that came before us that also were in the car business, the guys that were selling cars in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s I mean let's get them in the Hall of Fame, let's make a bust of those guys to be like superstars.
Speaker 1:Is it a perfect industry? It never has been. Is it perfect today? No, no matter how many new great stories people like to tell and make TV shows out of it, which is all fine and good, that's great. I'm not trying to start a war, but there have been dealers doing great things in their communities since day one. There always has Smaller percentage on a whole. Yes, are there still dealers out there that literally use everything internet and everything digital as the mousetrap to get people to the place where they can? At least that's I got them to the store somehow, some way, and then they still sell the car, similar to the way they sold it in 1983? Yep, there are. Is it okay that all of that exists.
Speaker 1:Yes, at the end of the day, what you're telling people is you need to be trying to make that job easier for that general manager, for that GSM, for the salesperson on the floor. Have some respect for that role and what they try to do, because it is very different to be the person who's trying to sell one car this week or two cars this week. It's very different to be that salesperson than it is to be the salesperson that oh, by the way, you're PE backed, you're VC backed, you're angel invested backed company that is still completely oblivious to how much it costs them to acquire just one customer. That they'll pay your dumb ass $100,000 a year to basically bat zero, no sales for a month or two or three, and yet you still have a job. Go try and pull that off inside the dealership and then come back. There's just so much of that, so I love that you share all that. I think it's really relative and it's really really important.
Speaker 1:When you look ahead, what gets you excited about? Maybe the future of the industry? There's certainly lots of talk about AI and we've been dancing around even data discussion in this conversation. What gets you excited about the future of our industry?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, we're kind of in another revolution now with AI and we haven't talked about it a lot because I think, much like anything else, there's still a mixed emotion and different opinions. You know, what I fear about AI that we always have is will it replace reality, at least in our minds, right? So, for example, we built our own AI engine at Flick Fusion so that we can they're still going back to your and what I see in the future that we're still fighting today to get quality images of cars. Just take me 20 good pictures of a car Not crooked, not, you know, it's just the same product. It's gotten worse, right? So let's go back to fundamentals. What do you sell? Cars, great. Make sure you take really, really good pictures of the product that you're selling, because that's how it's going to happen.
Speaker 2:The technology has been a crutch for for too long, where we got to clean it up and go back to the go back to the basics and simplify, right? Yes, there's going to be some places like weiler and you know love kevin fry, but jeff weiler, you've got to spend time with these type of guys that have been. You know they now launch their website where you can purchase a car cradle to grave right Financing, sign the paperwork. They're going to do it all internally. They've embraced that system now and they're going to do it just like Carvana, where you can do the paperwork and everything. That's great, as long as the car you're representing is the car that they get in their driveway. And that's Carvana's problem, or was their problem? Right, it's the car. When a car showed up at your driveway, it didn't look near as good as it did in pictures, right? Well, yeah, neither did your tinder date. That's the whole freaking. That's the whole problem, right? You can't put a filter on a car and then someone shows up. So I there's an oem, a specific oEM that we were in a digital program with and, yes, I've got my opinions on there. I've got a really good idea about that as well that I want to share.
Speaker 2:But this particular OEM, we'll leave them nameless. They had supplied CGI images to their dealers for new cars all during COVID, so that all their new cars, even though they're not on the lot, even though they're not even built yet, we can't do it. Here's CGI pictures of what that car is going to look like once it's built. So dealers had full galleries on every new car. They didn't have to pay a lot. Service provider didn't pay anything. This OEM is just giving them these CGI images. This OEM has just given them these CGI images.
Speaker 2:They didn't want to call them stock images because it's going to be the actual car that's going to have a VIN number associated with it. But for all practical purposes they're stock photos. They're not actual photos of that car. Right, yeah, the dealer is now so hooked on that crack that why would he now pay to have actual pictures of new cars on his website? Because you know, when that law service provider comes out, that initial time they come out and take a picture of all 300 cars. That's a $6,000 bill.
Speaker 2:So now, mr OEM, you're telling me you're going to take away my free cgi images and I've got to pay someone to take actual images. Yes, mr dealer, because you should want that. Every image on your new car inventory looks like a stock image. It doesn't look real. And here's what's going to happen they're going to come in to look at that car and it's going to have the wrong 20 inch rims. What do you do then? Right, that's reality. That's going to have the wrong 20 inch rims. What do you do then, right, that's reality, that's not artificial intelligence, that's real intelligence. That's no, that's not the same wheels I saw on your website, mr Dealer.
Speaker 2:So there's this huge back and forth where, okay, are you going to co-op people to come out and take pictures of my new cars, or when are you going to take those images away? Do I have? So you know, we've gotten, we've spoiled these guys to where we've lost. It's just the fundamentals. But just go out and take 20 pictures of the car, like you should want to do that, um, so I think, I think ai can be, as it much like else.
Speaker 2:It can be made use for good or evil. It's the dynamite, right? We can build bridges or we can kill people with it. It cannot affect the integrity of the car, of the vehicle that you're going to see. You can't use it to enhance the look of the dealership, right? You don't want to mislead anybody with it. The look of the dealership, right? You? Just, you don't want to mislead anybody with it. That's what AI seems to me to be. Is is, is we're going to? We're going to make something so real. You're going to think it's real. You know, and I just don't. I don't know. For us AI is extremely handy we work with. I can't say exactly, but we'll say it's one of the largest online retailers in the world who has just now gotten into the automotive business selling cars, because taking pictures is such a problem.
Speaker 2:Our biggest business today at Fluke Fusion is fixing images, our AI engine and, sean, I mean, when we launched Tilt Correction, the world went mad. I'm saying the picture of the car is like this, we can correct it. The picture of the car is like this, we can correct it. Just hold the camera straight, bro. It's like we're fixing bad habits. That's all we're doing. But the data tells us. I can go to the dealer and say 60% of your problems are this. Tell the guy to hold his head straight. You know like there's simple solutions with that data. So you know we're going all the way back.
Speaker 2:And so now for Foot Fusion and I'm getting to your question we're going back to the fundamentals. Instead of going to trade shows this year, we're going to have regional seminars every other month. Invite dealers to it and teach them how to take good pictures and videos. Let's just start there. Any dealer, any dealer, client, no client. We've been doing this since 2007.
Speaker 2:We should be the experts we are. We should be the educators we are. We should be the educators. Right? Every company? You can take pictures, but there's lots of. But there's the same rules apply.
Speaker 2:Whichever product you use, it doesn't matter, it's fundamental Don't get too close, don't get too far, don't chop the bumpers off and don't make it seem like it's 18 miles away, but there is not. So we're going to do seminars in different cities, invite all dealers and law service providers and say here's a good trick on how to take a close up, here's a good trick on how to take a testimonial video. They want to be behind you about a foot. There's just little tricks. So we're going back to fundamentals, going back to basics.
Speaker 2:Let's start with good images. There's no reason we should be making the money we're making on fixing images, taking away the glare, straightening it, cropping it, centering it. Center the car in the picture. So these larger companies, these portals, these big companies we work with, I say look, if you don't want to keep paying us for fixing pictures, let's take the information we've learned, go back to the root of the problem and train these people on how to take good pictures. So that's our goal for this year is use the data, use the imagery to go back to the root of the fix, the root of the problem, instead of throwing more ozempic at it. Right, you got to have a drug for the drug, for the drug for the side effect. So I just think we've overcomplicated cars commerce. God bless them, you know. And going back to your point, we were raised listening to mitch gallup speak. You think mitch isn't a smart guy, but jason rice was a dealer client of mine. I think he was like 18 years old. The kid Jason's someone you want to know.
Speaker 2:If you're a dealer, you want that guy on your Rolodex 100%, he knows his shit because he started in the trench in the room. Sean Bradley, hey, love him or not, he was a client of mine. We had multiple colorful conversations. Oh yeah, that kid started from nothing. Yes, Scratch.
Speaker 2:Yep, he started that company on. Now his sales method works in New Jersey. You've got to be freaking hardcore. Cutthroat top head. Yes, so they needed him. Right. Right, everybody's got a spot. But if you don't, if you don't know a jason rice or a, or ralph pagley or these government companies, put them in your rolodex man. There's just so much information and they'll tell you back when the day. Let's go back to the one, two, three. Let's go back to cars commerce. They're urging dealers to re-evaluate. We will evaluate your website. To make it simple, let's simplify the website. Yeah, it's a freaking great idea. Not only are they offering a service, presents himself as an educator expert, which they are, done lots of work with carscom. You talk about some veterans and some you know, top-notch people. They're dealer centric. They are always thinking about how do we make the dealer more money instead of how do we make more money off the dealer?
Speaker 2:there's two different company types. Yeah, but they've got it figured out and that is your website. Should be simple. They said it just two days ago on LinkedIn. I guarantee 80% of dealership websites. I would put money, have legacy code on there of a product that's not even on that website anymore.
Speaker 1:Who's their go-to over there? Who's their main go-to person at where? At the website provider with the simple websites?
Speaker 1:oh, carscom yeah, well, they're talking about going back to simplicity. Is it now is? Is the person there? I mean, because brian k Kramer, you know, running with the. Is it Aggie Trade? Is that the part? And he's a fantastic, smart, really smart dude. But is there? Is he the guy like? If you're like when you're thinking about Carscom or Cars Commerce these days, like I know, alex is still there, alex Vedder is still over there, but with their acquisition, for example, of dealer inspire for the time that joe chura stayed and bruce etzcorn and you could still reach out to those guys, okay, great. But now, if you get inspired by that, I'm just. It's just like a quick answer because I don't know who it is. I don't know who the person.
Speaker 2:If you were like that is a good question. I mean, you know, we're kind of in that graduating high school mode where, yeah, these guys we knew went off to the military. We never heard from them again some. Yeah, yeah, I was just, I was just curious because, like jason rice, uh, I couldn't.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more with you on him. I met him when I was at reynolds and at Lou Fuse and you know he's probably, if not same age, he's right around my age. But we both felt like spring chickens back in that era and he's one of my favorite. I'm glad you I'm not surprised that you agree, but he's one of my favorite examples of you got to know this guy. He literally knows his wheelhouse and pretty much all the other ones, or most the other ones, really like front and back, north, south, east and west. Yeah, from and, similar to you, from original like origin into the industry was the retail side. I can't claim that, although I didn't start an automotive on the digital side, but I was in parts and service and certified as a service writer. Then the digital age happened.
Speaker 1:But I can't say enough about, like the references that you made, because sean bradley was a a customer. Well, the dealership he he worked for was a customer of the leads. So I had conversations conversations with Sean Bradley when he was at Pine Belt and they were buying leads from Microsoft, carpoint Reynolds, and so all of that. I wanted to come back because you did something, whether it was on purpose or not, that I, as a podcast host I don't know that I'm a great podcast host, but I try to remember things that are happening so a lead doesn't get completely buried and one of the points of advice maybe one of the best points of advice you gave here as we get closer to, I guess landing the plane on this was for people. If you really want to help dealers, the main thing that you should do is make their jobs easier, like whatever their job is in the dealership, like make it easier for them, right? So, before you start selling your stuff to them, educate them, like make them smarter so they get it, so they even understand what you're talking about. But then you just talked about that's exactly what Flick Fusion is taking into, like your goals and priorities for 2025 is literally making it easier for dealers, no matter who you are in the dealership, if you're gonna be able to go to some point is literally making it easier for dealers, no matter who you are in the dealership, if you're going to be able to go to some point, regional point, throughout the year and go to a session that's literally going to be taught by, we're just going to teach you how to get better in these areas. And you just said, well, any dealer can come to this event and you can say, well, if you're a Flick Fusion customer, come, because I'm going to guess that there are existing flick fusion customers that they themselves can still improve on this part of critical, part of fundamentals, along with people who are. You don't have to be a customer, come and learn these things, because then you'll still and the thing that I love about it is because I think companies need to be doing so much more of this yes, abundantly, shareantly, share the elements of understanding what the problems are. And then also, by the way, here's the solutions Long before you expect somebody to take a demo or to buy your stuff.
Speaker 1:There's just been too much of the look at what goes on, and right now this episode will probably come out after NADA, but what's going on? Going into NADA, the same thing. How much of a bribe do you need to come in and sit in our booth and take a demo, only to not buy anything from us? Is it $25? Is it $50? The numbers have just kept going up over the years. A hundred dollars, whether it's cash or a gift card, to come to our booth, bribing you to our booth to come by, or, if you're not doing that, we'll give you something, some new technology product, or come and get some designer bag or whatever it is you're doing and I know people also hate that I'm becoming more critical of these things, but they don't work.
Speaker 1:They work as long as your definition of work is. Well, we got people to take some demos. Okay, well, you just go tell me how many of those turned into sales, and there will be people who will want to fight me on it and I'll be like you give me all your data, like show me it all without you doing anything to it, and I'll tell you that you're wrong. And nobody wants to fight that fight. But the fact that you guys are going back to education fundamentals around the things that make life, work, job easier for the dealer is yeah, you had me at hello, as they say. I'm glad you guys are doing that. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Well, it's because they take such a rip. I mean, you know the OEM flags them for compliance, right For everything Images, video, your videos, the logos touching the car. You know they're just trying to sell cars. You've got to deal with this, with these demerits that you've got, and you've got to go fix these. You know they're not professional photographers, right, so you're right. It's just it sounds so cliche and it sounds like you know every politician, you know let's kiss the babies.
Speaker 2:We want to make all Americans lives good, right, but it it is. It is truly that if you're, they will be your best friend and loyal If you can save them 10, 15, 20 minutes a day or something that is going to help them sell another car. Now, we know that that's not. You don't go in saying I'm going to help you sell another car, right? Yeah, these younger companies might do that, but that's a no-no. But the point is we should take the responsibility. It should be our responsibility to help educate these dealers, because the OEM is not. We could say it should be their responsibility. It should, but they don't do it. But they're going to sure, turn around and penalize that dealer every chance they get, withhold co-op money, threaten them. You're not going to get this, that or the other this month when no one showed them. So the bigger companies. I think it should be part of our responsibility. If you are an expert in that field self-proclaimed or not, or legit, then use your knowledge and to help educate these dealers. No one's doing that, right? You can't demerit them if no one showed them how you know the tricks of the trade, right. So? But here's the selfish reason the better images we get from a dealer, the better merchandising we can do for them.
Speaker 2:Right, we're gonna, at NADA, we're rolling out a digital ad platform where it's very unique to audience. We take an audience of people in their market. We video market to them a message. If they respond to that message, that audience then gets a stronger message. The rest of the audience gets another generic. So we're able to funnel, you know, target the message. If they respond to this, now we're going to hit them with a VIN number, a specific card. If they respond to that now, we're going to hit them with an appointment. So we can take a magnet and pull out of those audiences the people that are really serious and then give them a more serious video, right? So in doing that that's for the dealer.
Speaker 2:Like we've been selling all these years. We've been selling them video and telling them everything they could do, right, and they're like, well, shit, I got some cars to sell. So I said we just have to do it. Like, this is what we do for them. They don't have time to do everything we're saying we can do it and it'll be cheaper than what they can do for themselves. So I think it's some of our bigger companies, I think it's some of our responsibility to help these dealers because, especially if they're putting food on my table, you know, you've got to remember who pays the bills. And let me tell you, if that product doesn't work in three months, you're out the door anyway. So you better come and come strong and be willing to get in the trench with them. And that's just what we have.
Speaker 2:That's what I feel like most of the early companies did, right, some of these newer companies I've seen, I've talked to. They're great technology people and as they're selling me on their product as it would a dealer, I just cringe. I just keep saying everything you've said is wrong, like this is the first of its kind. No, it's not. This is going to revolutionize it. No, it's not going to revolutionize the car business. This is going to it forces no, it doesn't force. You know, it's just like I just get hit with all these messages. I'm just like guys go into a few dealers, try that. If you live through it, call me back. I'm like you got to be respectful. You know, even now these pitches, after all these years, if I pitch a dealer I've got a coat on. I'm dressing the part. You know you've got to respect these guys in this business. If you want to get respect back, that's for sure. It's earned. You earn respect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't run out there with. You're a game changer. How about you be the game winner? I don't care if you change the game. I want you to win the game.
Speaker 2:We're going to push. The needle 're gonna, we're gonna. You know, all of that is that we're the disruptors.
Speaker 1:We're the revolutionized. We're the. We will give you the greatest competitive advantage, like unfair competitive advantage. If dealers had taken all the unfair competitive advantages, the game changing, like well they would be.
Speaker 1:And they went and applied all of this game changing, revolutionizing, you know, disruptive, what best, fastest, mostest, whatever and applied all of it. They wouldn't need to go to any more conferences, they wouldn't need your dumb advice from your company that is just trying to sell them more crap they don't need. It's pretty hilarious when you think about it. I want you to think about so. It's funny because in the years past, in fact, some of the things that we talked about it was in the very office in downtown Seattle Washington, in the Westlake Center offices, where I don't know where I heard it from. I just remembered hearing the phrase be the difference. It wasn't part of somebody saying be the difference in the world you want to see or whatever. I've heard that phrase a million times. It was just be the difference and it was associated with the encouragement of, for as much as it depends on me, that I would be the difference in all things to people, and I have taken that seriously. I don't always I'm not a perfect person by far, but I've thought about that, especially in my professional life, more times than I could count. And that is how can I be the difference? In this conversation I'm having with a dealer. Is it my humor? Is it my understanding of something that is complex to them but I can make it simple to them? Is it just telling them the truth about something? Whether I get anything back from it or not, I will have made a friend. I'll tell you what all the dealers that are in this phone right now that are actually friends of mine, that I've shared meaningful moments with that had nothing to do with business, are people that I did those types of things for, like let me just give you some advice or some thought or whatever. And so that be the difference phrase has been something that I still, even to this day.
Speaker 1:I believe that it's like when people say like hey, how did you do this or what are your thoughts on that, I'm like I always try to say how am I able to be the difference for someone in any equation, personal or professional, the difference for someone in any equation, personal or professional? I want people to say Sean made all of the difference in the world. I do business with such and such company because Sean Raines works there and the way he treats me and he gives me great help and he gives me good advice and the way he takes care of things, and just, I want to be the difference in my personal life and outside of career, it doesn't matter what it is. I want to be the difference in my personal life and outside of career, it doesn't matter what it is. I want to be the difference in the equation and in the moments, if I can be, for as much as it depends on me and for as much as the good Lord, you know, supplies me with what I need to be the difference in a moment like that. And so, as I get close to the landing of the plane of this episode I want you to be thinking about.
Speaker 1:You know, is there something in your life that that resonates, that you think about, when you think about being the difference? And so be thinking about that while I ask you a speed round of like kind of this or that. Questions, easy stuff leading to something difficult. Are you good? Yeah, how do you?
Speaker 2:feel you feel good? Yeah, I'm ready for that. I got good. Yeah. How do you feel you feel good? Yeah, I'm ready for the I'll buzz in. How do I do the speed round?
Speaker 1:You just answer the this or the that and you don't have to think about it too much. If you don't want to, okay, they start really easy. Hot dog or corn dog, hot dog Okay, interesting Taco or burrito Taco? Hmm, it's easy. Well, I know right. Okay, how about Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Wars? Oh, star Wars. Okay, superman or Batman. That's terrible because they're both DC. Right, they are both DC, but they're still a.
Speaker 2:You know, still got.
Speaker 1:You do so. Superman, superman, yeah.
Speaker 2:He's felt more real. I can relate to him more Superman. You know I felt.
Speaker 1:I can jive with that.
Speaker 2:Motley.
Speaker 1:Crue or Miley Cyrus.
Speaker 2:Miley Crue, miley Crue, let's put them both together and just let them jam.
Speaker 1:I know, I know this one should be easier beatles or stones, stones, eddie van halen or jimmy hendrix excuse me one second oh, somebody's gonna give me a visual, so I'm like gonna get a. Oh yeah, okay, there's an easy answer. Oh no, I love it maybe that'll even even better. Oh my goodness so now sorry, tangent out of this and that, but this is my podcast. I get to do whatever I want. Um, have you heard? Eddie's kids albums, wolfie's albums, mammoth wolfie I'm a big fan of.
Speaker 2:I think he's going to nail it. He's already big overseas and if you can find, you probably have. If you can hear him redo Eruption, it'll bring tears to your eyes. Yeah it's incredible, and rarely does a guitar solo bring tears to one's eyes, but hearing Wolfie doie do uh do, eruption, it was beautiful hardcore.
Speaker 1:I'm all in on some wolfgang van halen. I have both of the mammoth albums. In fact I did the pre-orders and got them autographed. Most people don't care, but I totally love all things. Another side note they opened for cre for Creed. When Creed came, creed already played on their summer tour Dallas, but in November they came to Fort Worth, which is much closer to me, and so I went and saw him in the stadium, the Dickies Arena, of course saw Wolfie and amazing, amazing, amazing Love him. Okay, so that's a great answer. A little bit more difficult Test the waters or jump in the deep.
Speaker 2:That is difficult, I've done both, and neither are really comfortable, but I do at this age. I will test the waters.
Speaker 1:Okay, night owl or early bird Night owl, believe it or not. Messy desk or clean desk, clean, clean and mean okay. Um, last last two probably increasingly more difficult. See the future or change the past well, I would change the past.
Speaker 2:Man. It's so clear now things that I that I would would absolutely do different the future I will. I will take it as it comes. I am perfectly comfortable in in not knowing what the future holds and let it bring. But, boy, in the past there's, you know, there's a lot of purchases, there's a lot, there's a lot of things rains, that yeah I can relate brother, I can relate one different you know, yeah, yeah you and I are
Speaker 1:exactly exactly the same on several of these. Certainly, the change the past is that's me too, I I don't. The future is, uh, needs to be unknown for me, because life is I believed it was designed to be an adventure like I don't want to know. I just don't want to know because it has not let down, has it? No, it has not, it sure, and I think, honestly, and I know that you and I align on this, while we don't like all of the unpleasantries that come with, uh, these steps that we take in these moments that we have in our lifetimes, but they're, they're what make us who we are.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And it's just it kind of. It is what it is, just to embrace it the good, the bad, the unknown, all the mystery. Just embrace it as your life and do the best you can with it and you will find some way. You'll at least you'll get to the door of where you can decide whether or not you're able to be content or not. And if you can see that door of contentment and just walk in it and be like, well, my goodness, you'll be mesmerized at how much you really really have, and so I love that. Here's the last one, and this is the one everyone hates, save a hundred strangers or one person you love.
Speaker 2:Oh sorry, Don't hate me.
Speaker 1:Typical. I know it's terrible. It's awful.
Speaker 2:I would have to save a hundred strangers and I think the person I love would know that that would be what I would choose. Great answer.
Speaker 1:I just hope that that would be what I would choose. Great answer.
Speaker 2:I just hope that's the case. I just hope they're like yeah, dad, I got it, assuming it was on my children. Yeah, yes. Yes, oh, okay See now I'm starting to rethink the whole thing. I was like oh man, that's a good answer. I think they get it. I think they would say the same thing. I think they would say you've got to save 100 people. Yeah, hopefully I've taught them like that. Maybe that's what I'm going for, yeah, absolutely Humility.
Speaker 1:So be the difference. How can people be the difference? How do you like to be the difference?
Speaker 2:What are your thoughts? You know, in reading through this it's funny because you and I talked the other night for a while and we're catching up and we kind of were thinking the same thing, like if I retire or die tomorrow, what will the industry say? Well, not much, you know. The industry goes on. There's cars to sell. We have a big sale coming up this weekend, right? People aren't going to really stop for a moment of silence every time. So you have to think.
Speaker 2:You know what would people say and how do I leave that mark? And I think the one thing I've always said to to when I, when I work with dealers, is this might not always be a fun conversation, but my data trumps your feelings. I'm, I'm not, I'm not here to hurt your feelings or call your baby ugly, unless I've got data that says and maybe it's like I'm just not going to say it, but you have to trust me in that a lot of the things you've done for 10 or 20 years might change or might need to change. You might need to change Right. So it's to your point, I think, what I enjoy the most and what I would encourage, like these younger companies, if you with the name McGrath, alan Samuels, who's passed away. Most of these are passed, but now it's their kids, their grandkids. It's a family.
Speaker 2:If you've never sat down with one of those guys? To me I'm not a, you know, movie stars are not my heroes athletes I like a lot, but it's the Ken Garfs of the world. You know. It's the Al Gossets. If you haven't met Al Gosset, that guy's a freaking nut, funny as hell. But I tell you these are businessmen. Every one of them should be teaching classes at business school to say don't listen to that crap. The other guy told you. I'm going to tell you they're real skinny as a vendor. You have never sat down just to have a conversation with one of those guys. You've missed out. There are some amazing dudes, men in this industry who are billionaire icons and, just down to earth, just the coolest, nicest people. They got a bad rap, this industry right.
Speaker 2:So I think I, getting away from the I'm proud to say that I can. There are several large dealers, names like that that I could call on them, they could call on me, and a lot of times it's personal. It's not even about business. You know, it's it. I think what I've learned is I know what I've learned? And I'll tell you this is the best sales pitch I ever had, which is also the worst. When I was 20 years ago 22 years ago, when I was going to marry my wife, I started DealerSkins and her concern was I just don't ever feel like I'm ever going to be first, like I always feel like I'm going to be second to your career, to your business. And I said honey, you are second and you are going to be second until I get this thing off. That's a terrible salesman, like why did she even marry me at that?
Speaker 2:point you should have just slapped me and walked off Like the hell, did you just say. But that was my mentality. I was like just as serious as it could be. I was like, honey, you are second to my business, I've got a business to run. I've got dealers to. I've changed now, right, you've changed priorities. She was always first. I never treated her that way, but she was should have been to my career. I made my career first and paid dearly for that. You know, both in health and relationships and what have you.
Speaker 2:If you're gonna do that, be single. Don't drag anyone in there with you. Just use your single years to get out there and make your company grow, grow to work your 80s hours a week, but don't drag a family into that mess. It's a tough world for vendors and dealers both. And if you are going to do it, do it for the right reason. It's just not about the money, man. It's about changing an industry that has all the room for improvement. If you just make one improvement somewhere, you'll be remembered for that. Gosh, I never Viotto. Why do I always forget his name?
Speaker 1:We were just talking about.
Speaker 2:Dale Pollack. Dale Pollack, if you never had a chance to Dale Pollack have a conversation, you've missed out. Now he's retiring. Now he's getting out of the scene, right? He's a guy I would put on every fantasy roster, I would have him on every board of directors that I had. You know, and and to know that that we know each other, then I could call him, he could call. Whatever the case, you know, that's what this business is about People helping people. And you know he was one of those guys that he was. He was going to build the best software that was going to be the best for dealers and he did it by God, dealers, and he did it, he did it. It's a little bit of a rambling, but as I go over, I still feel like I have a legacy. I don't feel like I've made that impact where people are going to say, oh, here's a plaque in Vegas about Ezell who built the first Honda configurator. You know that's not going to you know I don't, I don't.
Speaker 2:But the main thing is people will remember a couple of things Sales and honesty. Sales and truth. You don't, you don't have to lie in this business. It's not part of the car business. I hate when people say that, well, it's part of the car business. Everybody lies. Car salespeople are not liars. They get lied to by the customers all the time. So, honesty and integrity.
Speaker 2:I feel like people will say he was honest to a fault, to where he's got knife wounds in his back from people that stabbed him. That he trusted, but he stayed true to that, stayed honest and ultimately his goal was to have the best product, not the best. I didn't want to be the best salesperson or the best CEO. I wanted to be known for the best product. It's not like Ezell. He was the best salesman. That doesn't mean, ah, ezell, that was the best product. That's a difference maker. That's what I'm. I want to do that with Flick Fusion. Even though it's not my personal company. I treat it the same. There's so much yet to be done and ironically, it's going back to the roots of merchandise Pictures and videos. We really don't even have to talk about anything else websites over complicated.
Speaker 2:You know your crm's over complicated. We've just as vendors and technology. We have ruined your life with technology and data. Let let's help you sort this out. Let's clean it up. Start from you. Don't need half this shit, excuse my French.
Speaker 1:I speak it fluently. This is. I think the episode speaks for itself. Ladies and gentlemen, viewers and or watchers, this is the closest thing to a Joe Rogan episode that I've ever done, and it has literally flown by. It's been amazing, jason, thank you again for taking the time. I will say, like I say at the end of every single episode of this podcast ladies and gentlemen, now you know what's going on with Jason Ezell, we'll be right back Outro Music.